Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis offers a top 10 list which ranks the Red Wings’ top prospects this morning:
When the Detroit Red Wings stopped being a playoff team more than half a decade ago, they had a rough pipeline, to say the least.
I was at the 2019 Traverse City tournament, an event that saw the likes of Adam Fox, Igor Shesterkin, Kaapo Kakko, Jake Oettinger, Philipp Kurashev, Thomas Harley, Kirby Dach and Brandon Hagel, among others. Looking back, it was seriously one of the deeper fields.
Detroit won the tournament, boasting a lineup that included Mortiz Seider, Joe Veleno, Filip Zadina and Taro Hirose, among others. Seider is a big piece of Detroit’s future, while Veleno hasn’t lived up to expectations and has mainly played a bit deeper in the lineup. Hirose has played some NHL games but has mostly stayed in the AHL with Grand Rapids, while Zadina was bought out and most recently played with San Jose.
In that time, Lucas Raymond has become a big-time threat up front, but they still lacked in the prospect department for a few years. Now? They boast one of the most impressive pipelines in all of hockey, with some serious depth at every position.
For starters, Simon Edvinsson and Axel Sandin-Pellikka are two of the best defensive prospects in hockey right now. Then you throw in recent first-rounders Michael Brandsegg-Nygard and Marco Kasper up front, and two of the best goaltending prospects in the game in Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine, and you’ve got a group that’s primed for a bright future.
Of course, it’s all fine and dandy, on paper, but they need these guys to produce. But it truly feels like the Red Wings aren’t too far away from being playoff-bound again.
Continued; this is a good, comprehensive list.
