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Wings win while mining the future By Richard W. Kozak, Jr.  |
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General Managers around the National Hockey League must be scratching their heads. While teams routinely ebb and flow through the standings of the NHL with various amounts of success with fortunes plummeting as quickly as they rise, the Detroit Red Wings have become the watermark for organizational success in North American hockey.
With another Stanley Cup on the mantle to coincide with, yet another, President’s Trophy awarded for regular season prowess, the Wings seemingly can do no wrong when it comes to finding talented players in all corners of the hockey world to augment an already loaded roster. The question arises as to how the Wings can continually find these gems in the day and age of the salary cap.
The beauty of the Red Wings “way” is that rarely to the Wings go out, “New York Yankees” style and purchase high priced veterans to fill a roster. No, the Wings have spent the better part of a generation getting the most bang for their buck and making players happy enough to stay in Detroit when they could pad their pocketbooks elsewhere.
Case in point to this fact is that the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last season with an amazing dozen players hand picked and home grown in the organization on their roster. To make matters more astounding is that these players weren’t of the highly touted Crosby, Lindros, Kane variety.
If one remembers the Stanley Cup run fondly, the names Drake, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Holmstrom ring as clearly as a bell. Not one of these amazing talents were drafted before the sixth round. Not one.
This year’s impact rookie, Darren Helm, was a fifth rounder while Osgood, Filppula, Lidstrom, and Johan “The Man” Franzen were all third round picks over the years. Late third round picks due to the order that the Wings have had to draft over the years in accordance with the team’s success. In fact, the only first round draft choice that seems to have made an impact on the Wings roster is Niklas Kronwall, a late round pick way back in Y2K.
In week’s leading up to training camp, we’ll take a look at some of the Wings’ best up and coming talent. As usual, the organization is chock full of players waiting in the “wings” so to speak so we’ll divide them up by position. In this installment, we’ll take a look at a few of the team’s top prospects at the Center position.
Right now, Helm seems to be the top prospect at the position in the organization. What a feeling it must be to be a rookie called up in the season and finish the campaign with a Stanley Cup ring. Yet, due to his age, Helm’s playing time was kept at a minimum down the stretch of the Cup run. He’ll still have to have a strong training camp to earn more minutes.
Joakim Andersson from Sweden is another player warranting interest. He’s big at 6’ 3” and over two hundred pounds, but at only 19 years of age, he needs more seasoning. The question remains as to whether that experience will come closer to Detroit or in Europe.
Cory Emmerton and Evan McGrath are also centers with a possible future in the NHL, but it remains to be seen if their minor league and junior success can transfer over to the NHL level.
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