Nate Danielson is back in game mode, and for the Detroit Red Wings prospect, that matters more than the usual rookie-tournament storyline.
It’s not every day a player with 28 NHL games on his ledger shows up for rookie action, but Danielson’s situation is different. A hip injury knocked him out for most of the second half of last season, and now he needs live reps of any kind as he works to get his timing back and push for an NHL job this fall.
“He needs this,” Dan Watson said.
Watson, the Grand Rapids Griffins coach, is handling the Detroit bench during the Red Wings’ NHL Rookie Tournament, which began Saturday at the Belfor Training Center. Detroit opened with a comeback, erasing a 3-1 third-period deficit to beat the Dallas Stars rookies 4-3 in a shootout.
“Some of these guys that have been around for a couple of years, they don’t want to play in these tournaments for different reasons, but he needs this,” Watson said.
“It’s been seven months, I think, since his last competitive game, and we want to give him the best chance heading into camp.
“And so I think this is a great warm-up for him. A great opportunity to compete against other people other than just, you know, like summer hockey skates. So I think this is big for him, and I thought he looked good tonight.”
Danielson finished with an assist and six shots on goal, and it marked his first real game action since Feb. 18, when he played for the Griffins against the Cleveland Monsters in an AHL game.
The bigger picture for Detroit is hard to miss. The Red Wings need help down the middle, and they need offense there, too.
Danielson showed plenty of compete and responsibility during his time with the Red Wings, but the scoring touch never really showed up. In his NHL stint, he had two goals and five assists.
“I’d say probably the base thing is just like the execution, probably the pacing,” Danielson said of the challenges of his first NHL experience. “And then, I feel like up there, if you make a mistake, it’s going to get capitalized on.”
Even without the uncertainty around Dylan Larkin’s trade request, the center situation is still a major issue. Andrew Copp, JT Compher, and Michael Rasmussen are not likely to be steady point producers, and Marco Kasper’s role remains unclear.
Is he a center or a winger? Is he the 19-goal player from his rookie season, or the nine-goal player from last season?
If Danielson can solve that problem, the Red Wings’ decision to take him ninth overall in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft starts looking a lot smarter.
“I don’t know if there’s one specific thing that I’m missing,’ Danielson said. “I feel like just kind of a bunch of things.
In Other News...
Red Wings Prospects Just Put Early Roster Pressure On Detroit
The annual prospect tournament gave the Red Wings a first look at a few names that could eventually squeeze into the picture in Detroit, and there was plenty to like in the showing against Dallas. Carter Bear was active throughout the game, Trey Augustine looked sharp in goal, and the young group left with a shootout win that provided an encouraging start for the organizations next wave.
Nate Danielson was back on the ice after a season-ending injury and looked comfortable skating alongside Bear, which is the sort of early chemistry the Red Wings will keep watching closely. For a club trying to sort out who might be ready sooner rather than later, performances like this do not settle anything, but they do make the roster conversation a little more interesting. [Read more 🡒]
Red Wings Ex-Player Watch Just Took A Tough Turn Abroad
Several former Red Wings are already finding work overseas as NHL training camps open, a reminder of how quickly the offseason can turn for players on the outside of the league. Dmytro Timashov has landed with HK Nitra in the Slovak League, while Jacob de la Rose is reportedly set to extend his stay with HC Fribourg-Gottron. Elsewhere, former Grand Rapids Griffin Radek Simek and Jakub Rychlovsky have become important pieces for Liberec in the Czech Extraliga, giving Detroit fans a few familiar names to track from afar.
The sharper concern, though, has come with Dominik Kubalik, who left a preseason game for EV Zug in the Swiss National League after a lower-body injury. For a player trying to keep momentum going abroad, any setback this early can complicate everything from rhythm to readiness, and it adds another uneasy note to a group of ex-Red Wings whose seasons are already trending in very different directions. [Read more 🡒]
Red Wings Prospects Had Several Young Names Steal The Spotlight
The Red Wings prospects gave their fan base a good look at the organizations younger talent at the NHL Prospect Tournament, edging Dallas 4-3 in a shootout. Detroit got contributions from several names worth tracking, with Jesse Kiiskinen, Carter Bear and Noah Dower Nilsson all involved in a game that had the feel of a promising early test for the pipeline, while Theo Rochette helped keep the matchup alive by scoring the tying goal late in regulation.
Trey Augustine was steady when the game moved to the shootout, and Detroit needed that calm after a back-and-forth finish. The result turned on a long, tense sequence of chances before the prospects finally found the edge they needed, the kind of ending that can make a tournament game feel a little bigger than the setting itself. [Read more 🡒]