The Global Game

Free Agent Frenzy

Can you remember a time when the Detroit Red Wings were a struggling franchise and a doormat of the NHL? Look up the sports news from the early 1980's and you'll find a team in desperate need of talent and identity. Lean times were upon the Red Wings as the team was shut out of the NHL post season six out of nine seasons, including a run from 1979 to 1983.

A year before in 1982, a new era was beginning to unfold in the Motor City hockey arena. Pizza magnate and avid sports fan Mike Illitch bought the team and installed up and coming assistant general manager Jimmy Devellano as the Red Wings new GM. It seemed as though Detroit's fortunes were slowly turning around. The Red Wings finally got back to the post season in back-to-back years in 1984 and 1985 being oustaded in the first round in both years, while adding one of the greatest players ever to wear the winged wheel on his chest - Steve Yzerman through the NHL draft in 1984.

By 1986, the Red Wings organization were ready to take the next step in the NHL winning heirarchy. Wanting to make a huge splash  Devellano waded into the undrafted, free agent waters, looking for those players that were not caught in the net of the NHL scouts trollers. Illitch gave Devellano the "all go" signal to allow the team to spend as much money as possible to land the biggest diamonds in the rough.

Those diamonds came in the form of a trio of  US college hockey players Ray Staszak, Tim Friday and Dale Krentz that were best forgotten by Red Wing fans. 

Ray Staszak

Staszak was coming off a wildly successful season as a junior at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Staszak was the CCHA player of the year and first all star after putting up 72 points in 38 games in 1985. Detroit needed a leg up on their Norris division foes and Staszak, standing at 6'0" 200 lbs, looked like he might be one of those talented gems that fell through the extensive NHL scouting ranks. And in the summer of 1985, Devellano was so convinced of Staszak's future pro potential, he signed the Pennsylvania native to highest free agent contract in league history at a whopping 1.3 million dollars over four years !!! This was an unheard of sum for such an unheard of player. Hockey experts and pundits throughout North America could believe what they have seen, heard and read.

Was Detroit actually breaking the bank for a untested college hockey player?  Yes, they had and now the pressure was on the 22-year-old to produce early and often.

But it was never to be for Staszak. Although he made the opening night roster for the Red Wings it would take four NHL games to supplant his future as a hockey oddity. Four games would all Staszak would ever see at the NHL level as he was sent down to the Detroit AHL farm team in Adirondack. A series of injuries to his shoulder and stomach permanently derail his once promising career and sour the Red Wings on this million-dollar flash-in-the-pan.




Tim Friday playing for RPI

Detroit continued it's 1985 college free agent foray, going after championship pedigreed defenseman Tim Friday. Friday was a star defenseman on the 1985 NCAA Div I champion Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers hockey team.



Friday with Detroit in 1986



At 6'10" 190 lbs, Friday wasn't a huge presence on the back end but he was known to be responsible in his own end of the ice and for finding the space for a quick pass up to the forwards. The Red Wings were trying to get younger on the back end and made a few trades to get the right combination speed, skill and size. Friday was supposed to fit that bill but after 23 games, posting no points and putting up a -9, the native of Calfornia was sent down to the AHL for the rest of the 1985-86 season after inccuring a shoulder injury. Friday regained his top form again in Adirondack, while helping the AHL team to the 1986 Calder Cup league championship. Friday never saw the bright lights of the Joe Louis Arena and the NHL again as he retired from hockey that summer, reportedly due to a worsening shoulder injury.

Dale Krentz was a solid forward

Krentz with Adirondack in 1988