DETROIT — Looking to keep one of hockey's top teams on steady footing in the salary-cap era, the Detroit Red Wings knew exactly where to start.

The Stanley Cup champions announced Wednesday that they signed Henrik Zetterberg to the longest contract in team history, a 12-year, $73 million deal that will keep the star forward in Hockeytown until 2021.

"Henrik is one of the world's premier players at both ends of the ice," general manager Ken Holland said. "This is a tremendous commitment on the part of the organization as well as by Henrik.

"We are thrilled that a player we drafted and developed will play out his career in Detroit with this lifetime contract," he said.

Zetterberg could have become a free agent at the end of this season, his sixth in the NHL. But, said Holland, "We determined he was one of the players we wanted to build our franchise around."

Negotiations began last June. "I'm happy I don't have to do it again. ... I don't want to play anywhere else," Zetterberg said.

The contract will pay Zetterberg $7.4 million next season, $7.75 million in each of the following three seasons and $7.5 million in each of the next four seasons. He is to receive $7 million in the 2017-18 season, $3.35 million in 2018-19 and $1 million in each of the final two seasons.

"From the start they've been taking good care of me," said Zetterberg, a 28-year-old native of Sweden drafted in the seventh round in 1999.

Zetterberg has 43 points in 45 games this season, the last of a four-year, $10.4 million contract extension. In 400 NHL games, he has 169 goals and 375 points, and 28 goals and 52 points in 62 playoff games.

He was named to the All-NHL second team last season, when he and then-linemate Pavel Datsyuk combined for 74 goals and a robust plus-71 rating.

Zetterberg also set a franchise record with 27 points in a postseason, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoffs MVP as Detroit won its first Stanley Cup since 2002. He scored the clinching goal in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

"Our goal is to try to keep this team together," said team vice president Steve Yzerman, who won three Cups as a Red Wings player. "He's the kind of person and the kind of player we want in this organization."

But the salary cap — $56.7 million per team this season — makes it likely that Holland will have to choose between two other key players who become free agents at the end of the season: winger Marian Hossa and center Johan Franzen.

"We're not going to be able to keep every player," Holland said. But Zetterberg's contract is structured so that it "gives us a chance to keep an extra player down the road," he said.

Other Red Wings players signed through at least 2012 include Datsyuk, fellow forwards Valtteri Filppula and Dan Cleary, and defensemen Brian Rafalski and Brad Stuart.