from Bob Duff at DetroitRedWings.com,

Playing in the NHL first, attending your first development camp second.

No, that's not how the formula generally works.

After the Wings signed Kuffner as an NCAA free agent out of Princeton toward the end of the 2018-19 season, he was immediately assigned to the big club to give him a taste of the NHL.

When he showed up for his first taste of development camp, everyone around him knew that he'd been where they all seek to go -- to the show.

"This was my first time at the camp so it's my first time seeing all these guys," Kuffner said of the other Wings prospects he found himself among, after spending the final few weeks of the NHL alongside and competing against the world's best players.

The experience level may be different but what he saw while surrounded by the rest of the Wings' future was a burning desire to get to where he's already been.

read on plus other prospect talk too...