Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis offers one rookie from every NHL team to watch, and he picks one of the Red Wings’ rookie trio as his spotlighted debutante:
Detroit Red Wings: Axel Sandin-Pellikka, RHD, 20
The Red Wings will start the 2025-26 season with three rookies in the NHL (Emmitt Finnie and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard being the others). While there’s a solid chance all three will end up in Grand Rapids, all three deserve to be with the big club to start the year. ASP is perhaps the most interesting – he might be a bit undersized, but he has immense skill. For starters, he plays with so much confidence – and it led to a U-20-leading 29 points in the SHL in 2024-25. His defensive game is solid, too. Sandin-Pellikka is physically engaged quite often, something that wasn’t the case in his draft year.
Continued; Sandin Pellikka probably has the highest ceiling of the three, and he looked pretty good on a very “off” night for the Wings yesterday evening.
