Axel Sandin-Pellikka,<\/a> Anton Johansson and even William Wallinder as players close to being ready for the NHL. But none of them were in the Griffins\u2019 top pairing. It was Tuomisto, 25, playing alongside NHL veteran Erik Gustafsson.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd I think we\u2019ve used him on the penalty kill more this year than we ever have as well,\u201d Watson said. \u201cI just think he\u2019s sort of come into his own. He\u2019s matured as a player, matured as a person, and we\u2019re seeing sort of, he\u2019s seeing the benefits of that and we are as an organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuomisto is 6-foot-5, 218 pounds and possesses a heavy shot from the point. He has improved dramatically as a one-on-one defender and never stopped working on his skating and quickness.<\/p>\n
Will Be Group 6 Free Agent<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one thing he has done and our skating coaches have done, our skill group has done, is he knows that was a deficiency earlier on,\u201d Watson said. \u201cHe\u2019s been working at it, will continue to work at it, but he\u2019s so smart. He doesn\u2019t get himself caught, he doesn\u2019t get himself outside of his position. He plays very sound positional defending hockey. You know, early on I could say we saw him get beat at times and now very, very rarely do we see him get beat one on one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only question now is whether it is too late for the Red Wings to take advantage of Tuomisto\u2019s improvement. Per rules in the Collective Bargaining agreement, Tuomisto will be a Group 6 unrestricted free agent on July 1 because he is 25, has completed three professional seasons while under an NHL contract and has logged fewer than 80 NHL games. The Red Wings have never called him up from the AHL.<\/p>\n
He undoubtedly would have options in Europe if he wanted to play there.<\/p>\n
But the Red Wings could try to re-sign him and give him a shot at playing in Detroit. The Detroit defense looks set, but keep in mind that Axel Sandin-Pellikka and Anton Johansson are still waiver exempt. They could be sent back to Grand Rapids until the Red Wings had an injury. The Finnish native Tuomisto played well enough this season to make the Red Wings at least think about trying to keep him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defenseman Antti Tuomisto wasn\u2019t the best Detroit Red Wings draft pick on the Grand Rapids Griffins team this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":864246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[42],"tags":[352303,2993,293,8993,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-864245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-antti-tuomisto","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-draft","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116742158305243774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}