With the World Junior Summer Showcase underway in Plymouth, the Red Wings will get an early look at how some of their 2016 and 2017 draft picks are performing against quality competition. Goaltenders Keith Petruzelli (USA) and Filip Larsson (SWE), defensemen Gustav Lindstrom (SWE), Kasper Kotkansalo (FIN), Dennis Cholowski (CAN), and forward Givani Smith (CAN) are competing for their respective countries. Given the focus on prospect development, I decided to take a look at the development of ten of Detroit’s better prospects.



What is NHLe?



Before we can discuss how the prospects are progressing, we first have to discuss the primary tool we will use. NHLe was first devised in 2004 by Gabriel Desjardins as a play on Bill James’ baseball model to show how scoring translated from one league to the next. To determine the quality of a league, Desjardins took all players who played at least 40 games in a league one year and then at least 40 games in the NHL...