Late last week the Detroit Red Wings traded winger Ville Leino to the Philadelphia Flyers for a 5th round pick in the draft, and young defenceman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen. Leino was expected to have a breakout year with the Wings this year, but after being a healthy scratch for most of the year due to poor play, he will not be missed. Last year, he came in as a highly anticipated rookie after tearing up the Finnish Elite League by setting a franchis record for points, he delivered in his very first game in the NHL:
But this year he either looked invisible, or flat out bad, getting checked anytime he had the puck. Sadly, after looking as bad as he did with the Wings, he will probably go score 30+ goals with somebody else. Normally, I would have liked to keep him to see if he could break out of this slump, but the Red Wings needed to dump some salary to make room for the injured Johan Franzen and Andreas Lilja, who are just now returning from Long Term Injury Reserve.
On the other hand, Detroit gets 6-foot-2 defenceman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen in return. The most games he has ever played in a season is 70 in 2006-07. He ended up with 5 points, as a +2, and...wow... 123 penalty minutes....
Detroit has promptly placed him on waivers to make more salary cap room. If he clears,(hopefully he will), then he will probably play the rest of the season with the Grand Rapids Griffins, the Red Wings farm team, unless Detroit makes another trade and needs to call him up.
He will be a welcome addition if he can do some more of this:
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Yeah totally!
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