Red Wings continue strategy of selecting players and letting them develop

Fresh off a Stanley Cup victory with a roster that’s coming down in average age and plenty of youngsters already in the pipeline to Detroit, Red Wings assistant general manager Jim Nill left the recent 2008 NHL entry draft in Ottawa (Ont.) satisfied he’s filled the one obvious hole in the organization’s stockpile of talent.

Photo by Walt Dmoch/Plymouth Whalers

Detroit selected Guelph Storm goaltender Thomas McCollum with their first pick (30th overall) at the 2008 NHL Draft in Ottawa.

By taking Guelph Storm (OHL) goalie Thomas McCollum with their first-round selection (30th overall), the Wings now find themselves in a most envious position.

Nill said he's never seen the club so well balanced with proven NHL players and prospects.

“This is the best we've been for average age of the team," Nill said. “In the last 10 years, we always had the clock ticking on a couple of guys. First, it was Larry Murphy and Igor Larionov and then (Steve) Yzerman and (Brendan) Shanahan.

“With (Henrik) Zetterberg, (Pavel) Datsyuk, (Valtteri) Filppula, (Johan) Franzen and the core of our team, our average age has come way down. That gives us more time to develop these players to see what we've really got.”

With a championship roster already in place and promising youngsters like Darren  Helm, Jonathan Ericsson, Derek Meech, Kyle Quincey, Justin Abdelkader and Jakub Kindl either ready to play in the NHL or expected to arrive in a season or two, the Wings took a long-term view at this draft.

After taking McCollum, the next three Detroit picks (defenseman Max Nicastro and forwards Gustav Nyquist and Julien Cayer) are all headed to college this fall or in 2009. Detroit also selected forwards Steve Johnston in the sixth round and Jesper Samuelsson in the seventh round.

“We’re very happy with what we got,” Nill said. “One thing we needed going into the draft is depth in goal. We got the goalie that was ranked No. 1 on our list.

“The next three guys are going to college, so we’ve got time to look at them.”
Nill said the most intriguing of Detroit’s other picks is Johnston.

“He could be the sleeper pick,” Nill said. “He played behind Shawn Matthias, but he’s got good upside because he’ll get a lot more ice time this year. We’re hoping to get lucky with him.”

Samuelsson is also another one of European scouting director Hakan Andersson’s mining projects in the depths of the Swedish hockey system. A late bloomer, Samuelsson has good offensive skills and will jump up to the Swedish Elite League this season.

Like virtually all their picks, the Wings want Samuelsson to get much stronger before they’ll consider him a serious NHL prospect.

With three NCAA-bound players in their six picks, Detroit sent their second-round pick to L.A. for Brad Stuart, the Wings continued their recent trend of looking more at college prospects now that European draftees have to be signed within two years like their major junior peers. College players don’t have to be signed until they finish school giving teams an extra two years to let their draft choices develop before deciding whether to extend a contract offer.

"The new CBA forced us to change our philosophy," Nill said. "Before, if we were going to roll the dice on a player, it was going to be a European. Now, it's on college kids.

"What we're looking for the most is development time. We want to get the most development time for a player before we have to make a decision on him."

Nill said the age of the Wings' NHL lineup and their abundance of promising of youngsters is allowing management to turn over the roster at a controlled pace.

“We weren't desperate,” Nill said of the team’s draft approach. “Having the influx of young players coming at forward and defense definitely affected the choices we made. We're set with good players coming for three to five years. It definitely affected our thinking at the draft.”

The luxury of being able to be patient with prospects is as important in Detroit’s ability to remain among the NHL’s elite as is their penchant for finding late-round gems in the draft.

It’s all part of a well-entrenched draft and development policy that has been in place for more than a decade. While they admit to a certain degree of good fortune on some players, the Wings formula of seeking talent, work ethic and character before worrying about size has served them well in amplifying their good fortune.

“Other teams have said we’ve gotten lucky a lot of times, but why is it we seem to get lucky so often and other teams never seem to?” Wings senior vice president Jimmy Devellano asks with the sarcasm dripping off his tongue.

The Wings lucky charms are Nill and a scouting team that has remained largely intact for more than a decade. The Wings assistant GM runs the show on draft day assisted by Andersson and the head of amateur scouting, Joe McDonnell.

“(Red Wings GM) Ken (Holland) kind of stays out of it on draft day and leaves it to us,” Nill said. “We’ve all gone over the names before we start. We’re all on the same page in what we’re looking for in a player.”

How in tune is the Wings draft team? Well Nill had to think long and hard about the last time there was a real debate about picking a player.

Almost grasping at straws, Nill finally pulls up Tomas Fleischmann’s name from the second round of the 2002 draft.

“It wasn’t exactly an argument, but it was between him and Petr Kanko, who is with L.A.,” Nill said. “We have a list of names and we scratch them off as we go and we generally take the highest name on the list.

“We’ll always take the most talented player available unless we really have a specific need and there’s not much difference between two guys.

“Generally, most of our arguing comes in putting our list together. But if one of our guys really feels strongly about a guy, we’ll listen and let him try to convince us.”

In Holland’s opinion, that’s the real strength of his drafting team. Having had such a stable group of scouts for so long, the men picking the future of the Red Wings trust each other because of their track record.

“We’re all looking for the same things in a player,” Holland said. “We’re all on the same page and we’ll argue over players before draft day. Guys fight to get names on that list and they do that by making their case to everyone else in the room.

“He has to get the rest of us to see a player through his eyes. We can do that exercise successfully because we have a well-established philosophy about what is a Red Wing-type of player and our staff is by and large unchanged for more than a decade. There’s a trust in the other guy’s vision.”