I saw a post about Andreas Athanasiou's production over the last two years and decided to check for myself at stats.hockeyanalysis.com. Indeed, Athanasiou is in great company when it comes to 5-on-5 production over the last two years. Here are the names in front of him in points-per-60 minutes:

Sydney Crosby

Connor McDavid

Mark Scheifele

Brandon Saad

Jaromir Jagr

And that's it. Two surefire Hall of Famers. The best young player in the game. And two other great young players. Of course, all of those players have played two or three times as much as Athanasiou. And to be fair, they played tougher minutes.

Still, it's impressive.

Then I sorted by goals/60 minutes.



Minutes Goals G/60 Minutes Points P/60 Auston Matthews 531 16 1.81 21 2.37 Andreas Athanasiou 546 13 1.43 22 2.41

The top two players in the league over the last two years have both played about the same amount of minutes.

Again, Matthews is facing tougher competition. But it's pretty clear that the Red Wings have been wasting one of the most productive players in the NHL. It's time for Blashill to let the kid play with talent and see what he can do.