Helene St. James

Detroit Free Press

Remember that hotshot hulk who was supposed to emerge from training camp contending for a spot on the Red Wings' roster, only to be derailed by injury?

Anthony Mantha is nearly a month into his pro career — and he's doing OK. He's not tearing through the American Hockey League like he did the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, but what he is doing is playing exactly like a 20-year-old talent who missed two months of training. After 11 games with the Grand Rapids Griffins, he has three goals and two assists. Some nights, he has looked very good; others, he's not, performing pretty much to the level his coach imagined.

"Anthony's progress is, to me, what I expected," Griffins coach Jeff Blashill said Monday. "That's the process of a young player learning to be great every night. The hardest jump, I think, is the jump from juniors or college to the AHL. I think it's harder than the jump from the AHL to the NHL. Anthony has been very good, and I think he'll be even better in time — it's just a matter of how quickly."

Blashill bases his jumping degree assessment on having seen Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar go from prospects to dominant AHL players to regular NHL contributors. (Tatar scored twice Sunday at Carolina, helping the Wings get back-to-back victories and a deserved day off Monday.) Mantha, who is 6-feet-5 and tops 200 pounds, turned pro this past summer after spending two seasons lighting up the QMJHL. His numbers were so good in 2013-14 — 120 points in 57 games — that he was penciled in to get some time next to Pavel Datsyuk during training camp in September. A fractured tibia waylaid that plan, waylaid Mantha, in fact, for two months.

Which is why his sparse numbers make all the more sense: He's an athlete who also jumped into a season when other players already had their "game legs" well established.

"If you think about it," Blashill said, "he played three games in the Prospects Tournament, and those were his only three games in six months, if you take summer into account as well. So he hasn't played much hockey at all, and now he's making this really big jump. With the time off, I think he's done a great job. Some night's he's an impact player, and every night you know he's out there."

Contact Helene St. James: hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.