Red Wings prospect Carter Mazur spoke with DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills recently. This morning, the Free Press’s Helene St. James wonders aloud whether Mazur’s best chance to make the Wings’ roster might have passed by due to a sustained set of injuries:
The 23-year-old third-round draft pick from 2021 projects to be a lower-six forward, a grinder-type who provides energy and is the type of player a coach loves to throw on the ice after an opponent scores a goal to settle things down.
His first shot at helping the Wings ended so quickly, it was easy to miss. On March 6, 2025, he was in the lineup for the first time – and as it turned out, last time time in the 2024-25 season. He suffered an elbow injury that took months to heal and required Dan Cleary, the team’s director of player development, to have a heart-to-heart with Mazur.
“He’s a great kid, good player,” Cleary said earlier this month. “He’s had some tough-luck injuries over the course of his pro life, which is unfortunate. I tell him, you have to start over – dig in, you’ve got to rehab, you’ve got to keep going because he was in such a good place last year. He’s just had some bad luck.”
Mazur’s dislocated elbow derailed the plans the Wings had for him down the stretch this past spring, which were to audition the 6 foot, 172 pound, right shot forward to see where he would fit into the rebuild.
Continued at length (paywall); as St. James notes, Mazur has been banged-up at both the AHL level on a repeated basis…
But he’s a 23-year-old who told Mills that he’s put on 15 pounds over the course of the summer, and Mazur’s grit and snarl are the kinds of elements that the Red Wings want to add to the bottom half of their lineup.
I’m expecting that Mazur will be afforded every chance to make the Red Wings’ roster come September, and, for lack of a better term, his time is now.
