McKeen’s Hockey’s Chase Rochon offers a review of the team performances at the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville, Tennessee last month, and here’s what he has to say about the Red Wings’ haul:
#20 Detroit Red Wings (C)
9 Nate Danielson (F)
17 Axel Sandin Pellikka (D)
41 Trey Augustine (G)
42 Andrew Gibson (D)
47 Brady Cleveland (D)
73 Noah Dower Nilsson (F)
117 Larry Keenan (D)
137 Jack Phelan (D)
147 Kevin Bicker (F)
169 Rudy Guimond (G)
201 Emmitt Finnie (F)
Detroit’s draft was very interesting to me because I find it hard to criticize Steve Yzerman’s picks which have been excellent in the past with some home runs to show for it. Nate Danielson and Axel-Sandin Pellika are great players who will be NHLers and good ones. They just didn’t strike me as the types of players Detroit has recently drafted with some hard nose battlers that are going to be warriors. I think it might take a while for either to become impact playoff players relative to some of the skill still left on the board, such as Oliver Moore at pick #9 and still available at #17. They pass with a C as most other picks were good, but just that they were good and not great, where teams ahead of them made some great picks.
Continued; I find it frustrating that people expect the Red Wings to do anything other than “stick to their player lists,” rankings be damned. Thus far, the Wings have made some good picks by going their own way, and they’re not about to stop for the sake of comparing players to the brighter, shinier names on the board.
