The Red Wings' prospect pool 10 years ago was highly regarded by scouts, but it didn't quite pan out to NHL success. It's a cautionary tale for those who expect prospects to be sure-fire NHL talent.
The Red Wings' prospect pool 10 years ago was highly regarded by scouts, but it didn't quite pan out to NHL success. It's a cautionary tale for those who expect prospects to be sure-fire NHL talent.
Having great prospects leads to teams to great success. Or at least, it's supposed to.
After all, that's the logic of why a draft exists in the first place, a way to level out talent league-wide and bring parity among 32 teams. As much as poor drafting, business decisions and free agent splashes can hold rebuilding teams back, the NHL draft usually means that rebuilders get lots of talent that will eventually join their roster.
But what happens when that top talent doesn't translate onto the ice? What happens when a number of prospects just don't work out — either as total busts or as less effective players than anyone hoped?
The Detroit Red Wings are no strangers to this scenario. In fact, just look back about 10 years to their prospect pool following the 2014 NHL Draft. Every season, The Hockey News releases a Future Watch edition that ranks prospects and prospect pools. In the 2015 edition, The Red Wings' prospect pool ranked ninth. They had five top-50 prospects. And with an NHL roster that was already competitive, this wave of young talent pointed the organization in a good direction.
Instead, 10 years later, Detroit is still looking to make the playoffs. It's just now becoming a competitive team after a lengthy rebuild. And out of its ninth-ranked prospect class, only one player is still with the team.
Where did it all go wrong? Let's deconstruct the past.
The Red Wings' prospect report in Future Watch centered around the organization's extensive mining of Czechia and Slovakia. As writer Bob Duff put it, "First came the Russian Five. Then arrived a cache of sweet Swedes. Today, though, the Detroit Red Wings are taking a different direction when it comes to European talent. Gustav Nyquist is an exciting young Swede, but the organization is now loaded with young Czechs and Slovaks, including Czech goalie Petr Mrazek and Slovak forwards Tomas Jurco and Tomas Tatar."
Nyquist and Tatar had already made the NHL, while Jurco was trending that way. They had all but graduated as prospects, leaving behind a different top 10 prospects. Let's go down the list:
1. Anthony Mantha, RW
2. Dylan Larkin, C
3. Xavier Oullett, D
4. Ryan Sproul, D
5. Teemu Pulkkinen, LW
6. Petr Mrazek, G
7. Mattias Backman, D
8. Tyler Bertuzzi, LW
9. Axel Holmstrom, C
10. Alexey Marchenko, D
No doubt, there are good players in that mix, including four current NHLers. Eight players of the 10 played at least one NHL game. But if we're talking about true impact players — especially for Detroit — the list of success stories shrinks down to Larkin, Bertuzzi, Mantha and maybe Mrazek.
Getting four NHLers out of a top-10 prospect pool isn't perfect, but it isn't a terrible batting average in an industry where potential isn't often fully achieved. Busts happen, injuries happen, and logjams in the depth chart happen. Each one of these affected the 10 listed prospects in their maturation process.
The message at the heart of this Future Watch retrospective is that expectations don't always turn into reality. Prospects can be highly touted, even make the NHL, but there is no guarantee that they will be effective players. So, it's wise to cool the jets when talking about the Red Wings' current prospects ushering a rosy future.
Speaking of Jets, the very cover of that 2015 Future Watch made the bold proclamation that Winnipeg's extensive talent pool would help it contend for the Stanley Cup by 2019. Instead, the Jets came as far as the conference final in 2018, when the inaugural Vegas Golden Knights beat them in five games. Now, Winnipeg is still looking to get back there, and it's shed a lot of the talent that its future hinged on.
Talent at 18 or 20 years old doesn't always translate to talent at 28 or 30. To emphasize this point, just look at the top 50 prospects in 2015 according to THN. Other than the faces with a Winged Wheel next to them on the list, Detroit also acquired Robby Fabbri, Madison Bowey, Jacob de la Rose, Jakub Vrana and Brendan Perlini. Only Fabbri has clearly turned into a consistently impactful NHL player, and he spent most of last season on Detroit's fourth line. And out of that top 50 list, at least 10 players could be considered complete draft busts.
Prospect rankings seek to predict the future with an imperfect set of data points. It shouldn't surprise you that the prognosticators get things wrong.
So how about today's predictions? Currently, the Detroit Red Wings have one of the best prospect pools in the league, with The Athletic ranking it second and McKeen's ranking it first. In the latest Future Watch edition of The Hockey News, the Red Wings ranked sixth, with five top-50 prospects. Detroit's top 10 prospects were:
1. Simon Edvinsson, D
2. Axel Sandin Pellikka, D
3. Nate Danielson, C
4. Marco Kasper, C
5. Trey Augustine, G
6. Sebastian Cossa, G
7. Carter Mazur, LW
8. William Wallinder, D
9. Albert Johansson, D
10. Dylan James, LW
Who among those names will crack the NHL lineup? Who among them might be a star? That's a question of time and patience, but the past shows that not everything is guaranteed when it comes to prospect pools.
It might be exciting to think about the future when all these players bring their talent to the Red Wings roster, but just know that the likelihood of all of them making it is slim.
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