Earlier this morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discussed new Red Wings prospect Jesse Kiiskinen’s displaying an edge at the World Junior Summer Showcase, and the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood has now posted a wide-ranging interview with the former Nashville Predators prospect:
Because of Kiiskinen’s mandatory military service [this summer], the Red Wings haven’t gotten a chance to see their newly acquired prospect in action since the trade until the ongoing World Junior Summer Showcase, where Kiiskinen is captaining Team Finland. What they see should impress them. Though he hasn’t been perfect and is scoreless in two games played, Kiiskinen’s skating and sticktoitiveness have stood out on a young Finnish roster. So has his leadership, a commodity in need for Finland thus far.
“He has good character,” Finland coach Lauri Mikkola told The Hockey News. “He is a good person and just a little bit leader in the locker room there. He has lots of giving for the team.”
A team-first forward that plays to win? In the Red Wings organization? Yeah, that’s not very surprising. In fact, Detroit had interest in adding Kiiskinen to its prospect pool for a while, including in his 2023 draft year.
“I had a lot of meetings and calls with the Finnish scout (Antonin Routa) from Detroit,” Kiiskinen explained, “and (when) I was (at the) combine, I had the interview with those guys and I was thinking they were interested.”
Eventually, the Red Wings were interested enough to acquire him. It just took some time and the right circumstance to do so.
Continued; again, the Red Wings traded a pretty good prospect in defenseman Andrew Gibson to Nashville for both Kiiskinen, a right wing who’s going to play for HPK Hameenliina of the Finnish Liiga, and the 2nd-round pick that Detroit used to send Jake Walman and his $3.4 million salary to San Jose.
My take after reading Eargood’s interview is that the Wings put a lot of faith in Antonin Routa and the rest of the Wings’ European scouts in order to swap the physical Gibson for Kiiskinen, so we’ll see how Kiiskinen develops playing his second pro season in the Liiga. Although he swapped out the Lahti Pelicans for HPK, he should be more comfortable and self-assured this season.
