Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press answered some questions from a few readers,

The first question is in regards to Andreas Athansiou.

It was a pretty damming indictment when, at locker clean-out day on April 10, head coach Jeff Blashill spoke about what he’d said to Athanasiou at their year-end meeting: “My message to AA was as a coach you have to know what you’re getting every single shift and the growth in him is going to be to learn to work and compete every shift. If I’m guessing whether or not he’s going to work and compete, it’s hard to keep putting him out there because I don’t know what I’m getting. So that consistency level and work ethic and compete is going to be critical for AA.”

Now, learning to be consistent is a common theme among young players who have a skill level that allowed them to dominate at lower levels of hockey, only to find out how much harder it is to stand out regularly in the NHL. Athanasiou has the potential to be a big part of the rebuild, either as an in-house scorer or trade bait, but first he’ll have to put up better numbers.

more on prospects....