Shortly after we find out who Mr. Irrelevant will be in a big event held in the Motor City, it will officially be time to dive deeper into the 2024 NHL Draft and where each team’s most pressing needs reside. As for the Detroit Red Wings, their prospects pool looks pretty good at the moment, and you can even say it’s among the NHL’s best. But even the best pipelines need improvement at some level since the sheer amount of depth can’t last forever.
For general manager Steve Yzerman, he still has a few positions that could use more youngsters, and the 2024 draft is where he can further solidify his prospects pool as perhaps the best overall in the NHL.
So, which three positions pose the greatest overall needs in the two-plus months leading to June’s draft?
A right winger with scoring upside would be a spectacular find early
Long story short: The Detroit Red Wings need so many right wingers in their prospects pool that I could have listed the position in all three subheadings. But this is a one-position-per-slide article, so I won’t make things mundane by mentioning the RW multiple times.
That said, there is no wonder why Tankathon has Steve Yzerman rolling with a right winger in their latest mock draft. Liam Greentree, who put up 90 points and 36 goals, would be a wise choice for Yzerman to kick off this odyssey to accumulate what should be quite a few wingers with those eight current picks.
Konsta Helenius is another one to look out for, and he’s one with some experience at the professional level, having played 51 regular season games in Liiga, with 36 points and 14 goals. Then, there is Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, who played most of the 2023-24 season in HockeyAllsvenskan, where he put up 18 points in 41 games.