Red Wings announce Traverse City tournament attendees

As the NHL regular season approaches, we also approach one of the most underrated tournaments in all of hockey. The Traverse City Prospects tournament has a cavalcade of Midwestern NHL teams participating and competing for the crown of being the best group of prospects. The Columbus Blue Jackets’ prospects have won the past few iterations of the tournament, is this finally the Red Wings year?

This year features teams from Dallas, Detroit, Columbus, Chicago, Carolina, Minnesota, New York, and St. Louis. The tournament runs from September 16th-20th.

Here is the list of Red Wings players that will be participating in the tournament:

This isn’t a terrible list of players to bring to the tournament. You have some older players participating like Russo and Bertuzzi, otherwise it is a pretty young roster. The big names are obviously Svechnikov and Hronek, who have been garnering a lot of attention recently. Can they win with this team of players?

Having a few older prospects on the roster should keep them in every game. Someone like Jake Paterson could steal a game for them if need be. Most teams who draft European goaltenders won’t have those prospects in Michigan for the tournament and will be relying on free agent invites mostly. It is a strong advantage for the Wings and could see them bring the trophy home.

Sure, this tournament is all bluster and it doesn’t really matter but it is also a feather in the organizations cap. It allows for a team to have a competitive environment to look at their own prospects and also others in the league as well. For a scouting department, it doesn’t get more valuable.