The Detroit Red Wings don’t sound worried about Nate Danielson’s effort, his structure or his habits away from the puck. If anything, the concern is the opposite: they want the young center to loosen up a little.
That’s not the standard development complaint you hear about a prospect. Usually, the knock on a young player is that the defensive details aren’t there yet. With Danielson, the Red Wings and Grand Rapids Griffins staff see a player who is almost too careful.
“He’s very responsible,” Grand Rapids Griffins coach Dan Watson said. “Maybe sometimes too responsible, and that sometimes can hurt you.”
Danielson got into 27 NHL games with Detroit last season and finished with two goals and five assists. His first extended look with the Red Wings showed enough that the organization still views him as a player with a real path forward, especially now that he’s healthier and older.
“Last year, when he got here, he performed really well,” Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said. “He didn’t quite hold on to it, but he’s older, stronger, more experienced, and our job is to help him.”
McLellan said Danielson was already penciled into the roster during training camp before a wrist injury knocked him out. Once he was healthy, the team sent him back to Grand Rapids so he could get his game shape back. Detroit brought him up again in November.
“I hope that he has the same type of training camp he had last year because he would have been on our team,” McLellan said.
Injuries have slowed Danielson’s push to become a regular in Detroit. After going back to Grand Rapids, he was shut down in February for the rest of the season with a stress fracture, believed to have happened in the hip area.
Now he’s back in camp healthy after what he called a “Big summer of work,” and he knows the next step in his game is offense. Danielson didn’t push back on the idea that his style leans defense first.
“I feel like finishing is definitely one thing that I kind of need to bear down on,” Danielson said. “I felt like last year I lacked that at times.”
He believes that part of the game will come with more NHL reps, and that learning when to attack is part of the process.
“I think it’s just kind of picking and choosing your spots,” Danielson said. “That tends to be the case sometimes, but I think that’s just kind of the more comfortable you get at the NHL level, the more comfortable you’ll be to kind of pick and choose those spots.”
Watson saw that offensive growth starting to take shape before the injury stopped it. For him, the key was Danielson getting closer to the net and creating more there.
“I just think it was his willingness to go to the net,” Watson said. “His willingness to create some more offense around the net.
“That’s what he was asked to do last year, and he started to do that with us before he got injured.”
Danielson is arriving at camp healthy, and the Red Wings are entering a season where they need help down the middle. That gives him a real opening. The organization’s message is clear: the opportunity is there, and he’ll get every chance to make it stick.
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