Detroit Red Wings prospects are producing in preseason. Why it matters

Frans Nielsen smiled as he began to talk.

The Detroit Red Wings are 4-0 in preseason, and prospects are producing. Only so much can be read into that, of course, but for a team fragile on confidence, it helps.

“Preseason is a funny thing,” Nielsen said Monday. “If you lose, you say, well, we’re working on stuff. But for sure it matters — it’s nice to get some wins. The season is sneaking up on us now, and getting that confidence, hopefully everyone has a point or a goal, so you just have a little confidence going into the season.”

To that end, it’s encouraging how much production has come from prospects: Michael Rasmussen has two goals and an assist, Dennis Cholowski has a goal and two assists, Filip Zadina has a goal and an assist, Libor Sulak has two assists, Evgeny Svechnikov has two goals, Joe Veleno has two assists, and Filip Hronek has an assist. 

"It’s been great to see,” Nielsen said. “We need the scoring. We talked at the end of last year that we need to bring in some of those young guys and so far they showed they belong here, so it’s been good to see.

“Offensively and skill-wise, they are better than most guys in that room. Probably better than me, too. I think what they have to learn is the game away from the puck — you can not always make a play with the puck like you might be able to do in junior, sometimes you have to make the simple play.”

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The Wings are expected to keep two defense prospects because veteran Mike Green is sidelined by a virus. One area under scrutiny is how well the defense prospects break the puck out of their zone.

“That’s one of the things that bogged us down the most — we couldn’t get ourselves out of our end under pressure," Blashill said. "Cholo does it with a lot of poise, Libor does it with his skating, (Joe) Hicketts does it with his physicality and his competitiveness and Hronek has a combo of Cholo and Hicketts.”

Cholowski would seem to have an edge on a job because of his skill set.

"He skates better than anyone,” Nielsen said. “He seems to be ready. You can’t have too many of those skating Ds. Even the one game I played with Sulak, he was a beast out there. Big guy, he can skate up and down the ice. So there have been a couple guys who have been really good for us so far.”

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Sunday’s 3-2 victory in Pittsburgh came against a Penguins team that included Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel, an especially beneficial learning experience for Cholowski and Sulak. In the game, Rasmussen score in the second period off a setup from Zadina. Zadina, 18, has looked better in each of his three appearances as he figures out how little space he has to make plays. 

“Scoring goals and making plays matter,” Blashill said. “It’s not the only thing we look at, especially in the short term, so we’re going to look at their overall play. But certainly a lot of the young guys have had pretty good impacts. The play Zadina made to Ras yesterday was a real high-end play. Ras has been really, really good, getting better every game. The more it becomes a man’s game, the bigger the impact he has, I would say.

“Libor has been really good, Dennis has been really good, Hicketts has probably been the best of the group so far. That was Hronek’s best game, and he can produce offense, too. It’s a good thing those guys are all really pushing. I’d say it’s still wide open and there are a couple spots open with Greener out to start the year. We’ll see where the next two games take us.”

Veleno was assigned to his junior team Monday, but cuts are expected to be minimal through Saturday given there are four games over five days. 

Contact Helene St. James: hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.