from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,
Wings head coach Jeff Blashill shared his thoughts on that topic and more with the Free Press this week.
HSJ: What are your thoughts on Filip Zadina’s NHL readiness after watching him at development camp?
JB: It’s hard to say definitely without watching him play against other guys that are going to play in the NHL. At development camp, there are a lot of young prospects, very good young prospects, but young prospects and until you get a player like Zadina where he is going up against other NHLers, it’s hard to say anything definitely about where he is at. What I like from both what I saw on tape prior to the draft and at development camp were a number of things. One, he has a real ability to score goals. It’s a unique skill that is a huge commodity in the NHL and obviously with our hockey team, we walked away a lot of nights where we thought we played pretty good hockey but didn’t score, and certainly didn’t score easy. And what I mean by that is scoring on one shot, not have to have multiple opportunities to score. I think Filip certainly has shown the ability to score. So that was great to see. What I'm further impressed with was that he didn’t look like a guy whose only ability was to score. Some wingers don’t want the puck until they are ready to shoot, some wingers want the puck all the time. I got to coach Patrick Kane and Johnny Gaudreau at the World Championship — they want the puck all the time. I thought Filip Zadina, both on tape and at development camp, was a guy who wanted the puck and has the hockey sense to make plays. ...
HSJ: Is there a minimum number of prospects that you need to integrate on the team for the sake of rebuilding?
JB: I don’t know that there is a number. I think one of the big keys is that when you are a playoff team on an annual basis, the right move is that when a young player and a veteran player are tied, the tie goes to the veteran. When you are a team that hasn’t made the playoffs for two years and a young player and a veteran player are tied, I think now the tie should go to the young player. And I say that because we need different results, and part of having different results is improving internally, and that can come with new guys being in spots....
more on each of the above questions plus a few more questions...
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