For many Detroit Red Wings fans, the 2021-22 season will always be remembered for the arrival of Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond. The team’s top picks in the 2019 and 2020 drafts, respectively, provided an infusion of youth and talent that the Red Wings’ roster sorely needed, culminating in Raymond being a Calder Trophy finalist and Seider taking home the award as the NHL’s top rookie.
Since then, however, the Red Wings have not included a rookie on their opening night roster (aside from Elmer Söderblom who was assigned to the American Hockey League after spending the first month of the season in the NHL.) This has become a sticking point for many fans and pundits from around the league; Detroit’s front office still characterizes the team’s state as a rebuild, but they don’t seem to be in any hurry to incorporate their top prospects into the NHL lineup. While there is nothing wrong with the front office having patience with the organization’s prospects, it is becoming hard to feel excited about the team’s future when the rebuild has only yielded two players over the course of Steve Yzerman’s five years as the Red Wings’ general manager.
That seems set to change heading into the 2024-25 season, however. Simon Edvinsson, the organization’s top pick in the 2021 draft, seemed to announce himself as an NHL talent late last season, but he won’t be a new face the same way that Seider and Raymond were back in 2021. That being said, there are a handful of fresh faces that look ready to push for a roster spot in Detroit when training camp opens up next month.
(D) Albert Johansson
Out of the five players included here, Albert Johansson is unlike the other four for a few reasons.
First off, Johansson was a second round pick from the same 2019 draft the Red Wings found Seider in. This means that Johansson is one of the oldest prospects in Detroit’s pool (he will be 24 years old in January of next year), but it also means that he is one of, if not the most experienced prospect in the pool. Since he was drafted, he has three seasons in the Swedish Hockey League and two in the AHL under his belt.
Related: Red Wings Top 25 Prospects: Post-2024 NHL Draft
That leads us to the second point. Since Johansson is such a tenured prospect, he will no longer be waiver-exempt as of the 2024-25 campaign. This means that if the Red Wings wish to assign him to the Grand Rapids Griffins of the AHL this season, he will first have to pass through waivers where any team would be able to claim him without giving Detroit anything in return. Since the end of the 2023-24 season, Yzerman has stated that he does not intend to expose Johansson to waivers, meaning that the front office and coaching staff are currently planning on the Swedish defenseman making the leap to the NHL this season.
While Johansson isn’t as physically imposing as some of the other defenders on the Red Wings’ depth chart, he has made a name for himself by becoming a smart, utility-type of defenseman that can play on the left or right side of the blue line. He spent some time flanking Edvinsson on the Griffins’ top pairing last season, but Johansson was generally a high-usage defenseman regardless of who he was paired with at even strength. The hope for this season is that he proves himself as an NHL-regular and effectively replaces Olli Määttä on the Red Wings’ third pairing, but the possibility of Johansson earning a bigger role than that shouldn’t be written off.
(F) Marco Kasper
With their top pick in the 2021 draft set to join the team on a full-time basis, the Red Wings’ top pick in the 2022 draft seems to be on the verge of taking the step as well.
Marco Kasper’s first AHL season can be seen as a tale of two halves. The Austrian forward struggled to find consistency in the opening months of the 2023-24 season, bouncing up and down the lineup as the Griffins’ coaching staff tried to find the right mix. As the new year began, he seemed to figure things out as his point totals began to climb. When all was said and done, he had the fourth-most points on the team as well as the third-most points during the Griffins’ nine-game playoff run.
Kasper’s game is often characterized by his high level of competitiveness as well a skill level that is perhaps a bit underrated. He isn’t afraid to try “The Michigan” if he has the puck behind the opposing net, and he can handle the puck in tight spaces along the boards and near the crease. Like Johansson, Kasper is an adaptable player that can play in many different situations. His versatility should eventually lead to a role on both the power play and the penalty kill; that two-way ability should be his ticket to the NHL, and he might just punch his ticket this season.
Although he was drafted as a center, Kasper could also find a home on the wing, depending on how the rest of the Red Wings’ lineup takes shape. Yzerman has been pretty clear that he prefers players like Kasper to play in the AHL if they aren’t going to play top six minutes in the NHL, but it isn’t unreasonable to wonder if he could earn his way onto the NHL roster in a checking role before proving himself as a more offensively-gifted option. J.T. Compher likely has the inside track to be the Red Wings’ second line center again this season, but it would be a welcome development if Kasper can challenge Compher for that role.
(LW) Carter Mazur
The lowest-drafted player on this list, Carter Mazur joined the Red Wings organization in the 2021 draft along with Edvinsson, and the native of Jackson, Michigan has done nothing but win since he was drafted.
As a freshman at the University of Denver, Mazur helped the Pioneers secure a national championship in 2022 with 14 goals and 38 points in 41 games. Although they didn’t repeat the following season, Mazur found another level in his sophomore season. He led his team in goals, finished second in points, and he asserted himself as a chippy forward while wearing an ‘A’ on his sweater as an alternate captain. Last season, his first in the AHL, he finished second in both goals and points while playing a role on a formidable top line that also featured Kasper and Jonatan Berggren late in the season and throughout the playoffs.
Mazur, like Kasper, is a scrappy player whose style of play is tailormade for the playoffs. He gets under his opponents’ skin, and he has proved he is capable of beating goaltenders at every level he has played at. Also like Kasper, Mazur is the type of player that could fit in just as well on a checking line as he would on a scoring line – though Mazur might be a more natural fit on a checking line than Kasper would be. Unlike other players on this list, it feels like he has a wider variety of outcomes that could lead to him making the NHL roster.
For the Red Wings’ rebuild to truly turn the corner, they need more than just their first round picks to become NHL players. As a former third round selection, Mazur would be just that, and he would be another Michigan-born player for an organization that seems eager to collect as much homegrown talent as possible. He’s a future fan-favorite, and he’ll have a chance to prove it once training camp opens up.
(G) Sebastian Cossa
The biggest longshot on this list, Sebastian Cossa has been labeled as the Red Wings’ goalie of the future since he was selected 15th overall in the 2021 draft. With two seasons of pro hockey, one in the ECHL and one in the AHL, under his belt, he is as accomplished and confident as he has ever been. After leading the Griffins to their first playoff series win since 2017, the athletically-gifted goaltender from Alberta has his eyes set on taking his talents to the NHL this season.
Of course, with Alex Lyon, Ville Husso, and newly-signed Cam Talbot all signed for this season – not to mention Jack Campbell as well – Cossa’s path to the NHL is the most obstructed of any prospect on this list and, arguably, the Red Wings’ pool as a whole. As things currently stand, the plan seems to be for Cossa to remain with the Griffins and earn an increased workload over what he had last season, with hopes set on the 2025-26 season for his potential debut as a full-time NHLer.
However, Cossa’s ceiling is probably the highest of any goalie in the Red Wings’ system. Talbot is a 37-year-old journeyman with almost 500 NHL starts to his credit, regular season and playoffs combined. Campbell was just chased out of Edmonton after failing to live up to the big-money contract the Oilers handed him back in 2022. Husso spent all of last season on injured reserve and was hardly established as an NHL goaltender prior to that. Lyon set several career-high totals last season after playing in a starting role for the first time in his career at 31 years old. It won’t be easy, but it is not impossible that Cossa looks like one of the two best options in training camp and forces some interesting decisions before the start of the season.
(C) Nate Danielson
The youngest player on this list, Nate Danielson was the Red Wings’ top pick in the 2023 draft. He put Hockeytown on notice last year when he was one of the final cuts from training camp after nearly securing a roster spot. After another successful season in the Western Hockey League (WHL), he joined the Griffins for their second round playoff series against the Milwaukee Admirals. While he played in just two games, he didn’t look overmatched in the most competitive atmosphere of his career to date.
Danielson is arguably the best playmaker in the Red Wings’ system, as evidenced by his totals in the WHL the last two seasons. He likes to have the puck on his stick and battles up and down the ice to retrieve it. As has become customary for most Red Wings prospects, he has a strong two-way game and he could potentially play a role on both the power play and the penalty kill. He is a former captain at the WHL level, and his commitment to doing things the right way on and off the ice is something that Yzerman and head coach Derek Lalonde would welcome into the Red Wings’ locker room.
Danielson’s path to the NHL almost certainly hinges on his ability to secure a role in the top six. That would mean outplaying Compher for the second line center role, and it would mean that he showed some serious chemistry with some combination of Raymond, Vladimir Tarasenko, Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat. With wingers like that, Danielson could become an early Calder Trophy candidate depending on how potent his line’s offense is.
All of this could be moot, of course, if someone like Mazur and/or Kasper looks better and claim spots ahead of Danielson on the depth chart. The Red Wings, ever patient with their prospects, are highly unlikely to carry several rookies in their lineup, especially given the amount of players already signed to NHL contracts. If Danielson doesn’t look like the cream of the crop or he looks like he isn’t ready for the grind of a full NHL season, he will spend this season playing big minutes in Grand Rapids.
What rookies do you think have a shot at making the Red Wings’ 2024-25 roster? Let us know in the comments section down below!
