Detroit says no

the Minnesota wild says no for Jason Zucker

Detroit isn't trading AA! Detroit also doesn't want Maatta who has spent just over a 1/3 of his career IR. Trading Pittsburgh's 1st for Detroit's 2nd isn't much incentive there are 15 picks between them.

How does Detroit plan on getting younger on defense? Kronwall, Daley, Ericsson, DeKeyser, and Green. Other than Bowey and Cholowski, you don't have much youth on the blue line, and you have an abundance of good young forwards in Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, Rasmussen, Zadina, Svechnikov, and Athanasiou. Detroit is likely going to have to use one of those guys to improve the blue line. The team has already had issues signing AA once, so, seems like he would be the most likely to be moved.

You sure? Because Rust is actually a pretty similar player to Zucker. Zucker may have more scoring potential, but he's also 2M more expensive. Like Kessel for Pittsburgh, seems to be a matter of when not if Zucker gets moved, and the thought seems to be that Minnesota wants to clear space to make runs at UFAs. Kessel may be a better scorer, but he costs you more than Zucker.

Penguins fleece all of those teams.

First with the exception of Bowey the rest of our D have been with Detroit before they started to rebuild. If you look at Detroit's home page on CapFriendly.com you'll see the only D on contract past next season is DeKeyser. Kronwall may come back to reach 1000 games. Detroit will let him come back because has been a big part of the team for 15 seasons.
It has taken longer than Detroit wanted. The last couple of TDLs Green gave 2 teams he would go to and I don't know if the teams didn't want him or didn't want to pay Hollands asking price. You're a Pittsburgh fan right? Would you have wanted Pittsburgh to pick him up at the TDL? Since Daley is better than Ericsson you can see why it has taken long time.
Besides Cholowski and Bowey the Wings have Hronek, Hicketts, and Sulak who all saw playing time last season. The Wings signed Kaski at the World Championships and Lindstrom who been getting all types of praise after a good season in Sweden. The last 2 I have no idea how ready they are and will have to wait for camp to see. The rest in order talent go: Hronek, Cholowski, Bowey, Hicketts, Sulak. I know Detroit will probably need to trade for a veteran defenseman. But it will most likely be for a top pair defenseman. In all honestly it will probably be Trouba and hope Detroit doesn't give up to much to get him. But Yzerman told Cheveldayoff the big 3 (Larkin, AA Mantha) were off limits when discussing Trouba. In trading it will most likely be Svechnikov or Rasmussen and probably Bowey. Bertuzzi is too valuable because there aren't too many players like him a grinder/energy player with soft hands and a scoring touch near the net.

AA and Blashill didn’t get along at the end of last season. But AA spent the offseason working on his defense and came in to camp committed to playing both sides of the puck and his ice time increased. Then Blashill started to let him play some center (AA prefers to play center) and not just wing. When Larkin got hurt Blashill looked too AA to take over for him and then at the end of this season Blashill told the media AA is his #2 center moving forward.

Now AA had 30 goals 24 assists for 54 points in 76 games. I'm sorry but In my opinion moving up a half round and Maatta aren't close to AA's value. Maatta is a second pair defenseman and I already mentioned injuries. Now I noticed he was a healthy scratch quite a bit and I don't know why.