Wings Lose Berggren to Blues via Waivers

The Detroit Red Wings lost forward Jonatan Berggren to the St. Louis Blues via waivers on Tuesday.

STL claims Berggren

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) December 16, 2025

Berggren was waived on Monday after appearing in only 15 of Detroit’s first 33 games of the season, scoring twice and adding four assists in that time.

Neither his waiving nor his claiming should be much of a surprise. Berggren never really found a spot in the Detroit lineup, with his production too low to justify a top-six role but his style of play not particularly suited for a spot in the bottom six. At 25 years old, however, he’s still young enough that it makes sense for St. Louis to take a chance on him, especially with the Blues looking for any help they can get with the league’s fourth-worst offense this season..

It is somewhat interesting that the Red Wings couldn’t swing a trade for Berggren with anyone. It makes sense that some team was going to snatch him on waivers for free but that no one was even willing to pay a seventh-round pick is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.

With Berggren’s departure, it’s hard not look back and see what a disaster the start of the Red Wings’ current rebuild was. At this point it’s safe to say that the most-useful of the 21 players the Red Wings selected across the 2017 and 2018 drafts was Michael Rasmussen, with the then-Ken Holland-led Wings passing over Owen Tippet and Gabe Vilardi and Martin Necas and Nick Suzuki to pick him.

Losing Berggren for nothing now doesn’t hurt the Red Wings (though it may look that way if he revitalizes his career in St. Louis). Drafting him in the first place did. We just didn’t know it then.