Detroit Red Wings Lose Nestrasil, But What Does it Mean?

On Wednesday, the Detroit Red Wings put rookie Andrej Nestrasil on waivers hoping he would clear and be on his merry way back to Grand Rapids. Sadly this was not the case.

On Thursday the Carolina Hurricanes picked up Nestrasil, putting the Wings a player down. Detroit waived Nestrasil to make room for Stephen Weiss, who will play a few games for Grand Rapids before rejoining the Red Wings. But with all this going on was the waive really worth it?

Nestrasil had 36 points in 70 games last season with the Griffins. He has a great eye for setting people up and fast legs. Babcock liked what he saw in training camp and preseason and gave Andrej the pass to join the Wings where a hole was left by an ailing Weiss.

“Nesty” as his teammates and Mike Babcock call him was not projected to be a really big goal scorer in the NHL. He is great on his skates however and makes some really good passes (why he was on the team in the first place). In 13 games played he had 2 assists giving him only 2 points. Looking at Weiss in his 26 games played last year he had 2 goals and 2 assists giving him 4 points. The stats trend in the same pattern for both players.

More from Detroit Jock City

The difference here is Weiss is a veteran player. However I believe a completely healthy Weiss is actually pretty dangerous. If I had to chose between keeping Nestrasil and benching Weiss or waiving Nestrasil I would waive all day. The fact is we haven’t seen a healthy Weiss play. He was a proven goal scorer with Florida and could very well do the same here. He needs time to get back into form, he has never really been at 100% with the Wings.

The other side of this is that Grand Rapids is packed with talent. Losing Nestrasil isn’t really something to fret over. If Weiss is injured again (knock on wood) then we have the ability to call up another really talented player, like Anthony Mantha. Depth is something that we have, which is a luxury in this league.