Wakiji discusses Zach Nastasiuk’s 17-18 campaign

DetroitRedWings.com’s Dana Wakiji profiles Red Wings prospect Zach Nastasiuk today, and Nastasiuk is the poster boy for a near-legion’s worth of solid grinding forwards who may or may not make the NHL.

In Nastasiuk’s case, the son of a CFL football player has struggled to gain traction in the AHL, but the affable 23-year-old has played quite well for the ECHL’s Toledo Walleye, and Nastasiuk appears ready to “stick” in the AHL:

Quotable: “He went to Toledo and when we called him up, he played himself into our lineup. He knows how to do everything right out there, he’s dependable and a heavy body. He played very well for us. This was a very important year for him. Seeing him at the end of the year, he was playing with more confidence, holding onto the puck. He knows how to play the right way, play on the right side of the puck. You only have to tell him something one time and he does it right. He’s a pretty smart player. When he first got here, he could keep his speed for about 25 seconds and after that, he would get fatigued and slow down. I didn’t see that at all this year.” — Todd Nelson, former Grand Rapids Griffins head coach

Wakiji continues, examining Nastasiuk’s “numbers” from the 2017-18 season. I’m a fan of Nastasiuk’s work ethic, but I’m not sure whether his skating will improve enough to earn him an NHL spot.

Published by

George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.

One thought on “Wakiji discusses Zach Nastasiuk’s 17-18 campaign”

  1. Prior to Nastasiuk getting drafted, “The Hockey News” wrote a quote from a scout saying that Nastasiuk had an excellent chance of being a middle 6 NHL player. Plus, and I am paraphrasing here, from my memory “that this kid may make all of us look wrong by not being taken in the first round.” Such is the problem by taking a 17 or 18 year old in the draft. In looking over the potential NHL draft choices, I would recommend “The Athletic” recent look at the top 74 choices. Speed, physicalness, hockey sense and puck handling are evaluated. For me, speed is very important and maybe the most important in todays NHL, but only part of the total package. Speed can get you a lot of Darren Helms, but that alone won’t get you victories. Of note the article lists Bouchard and Dobson in the 17-19 range overall which is interesting. From my doing a bit of research into other mock drafts, that is decidedly an outlier.

Comments are closed.