Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses Red Wings prospect Axel Sandin Pellikka’s likely place of employment this upcoming season.
Duff suggests that the 5’11,” 185-pound defenseman will probably begin his 2025-2026 season with the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins. The comments made by both GM Steve Yzerman and assistant director of player development Dan Cleary support Duff’s assertion:
“Axe is going to have to get stronger,” Red Wings development coach Dan Cleary said. “He’s got to spend a lot of time in the gym, working on skating, learning.”
The jump from Europe to North America is a difficult step. It takes a very special player to do it in one leap. Lucas Raymond accomplished the feat in 2021, so it’s not out of the question that it can be done. However, with a defenseman, it’s a lot to ask. Even Moritz Seider was given time in the AHL before being asked to suit up for the big club.
Sandin Pellikka, chosen 17th overall in the 2023 NHL entry draft, managed to get into two regular-season AHL games and three Calder Cup playoff games for the Grand Rapids Griffins. He dished out one assist and was minus-two. Having witnessed two of those games, he wasn’t performing with a level of dominance that he’ll need to make it as an NHLer this fall.
“It was very valuable for him to see the pace and the gap control that he needs to have,” Cleary said. “With the smaller ice, it probably had a huge adjustment.”
Yzerman was seeing the same growing pains in Sandin Pellikka’s game last spring.
“I think it was enlightening for him,” Yzerman said. “Maybe eye-opening a little bit. It’s a little smaller ice, faster game. Albeit it’s only the American League, not the NHL, which is even faster in that it’s a different game than in Europe. And he’s got some work to do.”
Continued; as Duff suggests, Sandin Pellikka will probably play in the majority of the Red Wings’ 8 preseason games, affording him the chance to acclimate to the pace of North American hockey, but Yzerman suggested to the media that there’s nothing like a regular season NHL game in terms of quality competition, and he’s right, too.
So the question becomes a simple, “Where is Sandin Pellikka at?” in terms of his development. From everything I’ve seen of Sandin Pellikka’s play, he can skate, he can deal and dish pucks with fine passes and a slick shot selection…
But he is also prone to resetting and resetting some more on the 100-foot-wide international ice, and he’s got to get stronger in terms of his upper body and his ability to stand up and stop opponents.
He can skate like Simon Edvinsson and has the offensive game of the player for whom he was traded, one Filip Hronek, but it will take time for ASP to adjust to 85-foot-wide ice and playing against bigger, stronger and meaner North American competition.
You can never rule out anything happening, so there’s always a chance that he will make the team out of the exhibition season, but it’s just unlikely that ASP will jump over other players on the depth chart. He needs time to adjust to the North American pace of play and he needs time to get a little grittier. That’s why the Red Wings have an AHL affiliate.
