| Detroit Free Press
Top prospects on 2020 draft, Detroit Red Wings’ Steve Yzerman
Top prospects in the 2020 NHL draft talk on a Zoom call, Sept. 24, 2020.
When he was younger, Marco Rossi’s favorite player was Pavel Datsyuk. Anyone who could dangle the puck like that was right up Rossi’s alley.
While other children knew they might be rewarded with a trip to a favorite restaurant if they did as their parents wanted and scored a goal, Rossi’s father, Michael, urged his son to keep his head up and focus on making good plays.
That’s the skill set propelling Rossi to be regarded as one of the top prospects in the 2020 draft, and a leading candidate for Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman to consider at the fourth overall pick.
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Rossi interviewed with the Wings virtually after the pandemic wiped out June’s combine.
“It was really good with Detroit,” he said during a Zoom call this week. “No fun questions, but I talked with them three times.”
Other leading candidates for Yzerman at No. 4 include forwards Cole Perfetti, Alexander Holtz, Jack Quinn and Lucas Raymond, and defensemen Jamie Drysdale and Jake Sanderson. Alexis Lafreniere, Tim Stützle and Quinton Byfield are projected to be the first three draft picks.
More Wings draft prospects profiles:
Forward Cole Perfetti gets silent treatment from Steve Yzerman
Why Jamie Drysdale makes sense for Steve Yzerman on draft day
Rossi has been back in Austria since spring, occasionally posting videos of his workouts. He’s regarded as a tremendous skater, but players of his caliber get to where they are because they never stop pushing themselves. As he prepared an offseason program, he knew his primary objective.
“My main goal was to get faster, get more explosiveness,” Rossi said. “I started to do that right away when I came back from Canada in mid-March. We did a really good job. We’ve been working on it 6-7 months now, and it’s going really good. We can see big improvements. I’ve never felt so good on the ice. It got so much better with my body.”
To have six months in a weight room, uninterrupted by games, is unheard of for hockey players. It has allowed Rossi, listed as 5-foot-9 and 183 pounds, to gain muscle. He knows he’s on the smaller side, but similarly sized forward Brayden Point — at 5-10 and 166 pounds — has been putting on a show for the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup playoffs. After Datsyuk left the Wings in 2016, Point emerged as Rossi’s new role model.
“He’s so smart,” Rossi said. “He’s the same size as me and the way he’s skating around other players is so crazy. He’s not afraid. He’s a really good playmaker and a really good shooter.”
The Wings could use a player who brings both those facets. Though they have a potential second-line center in Joe Veleno, Rossi brings another level of hockey IQ, the kind of deft passing that could make him an ideal center for Filip Zadina. Rossi is a strong-willed player who plays aggressively in all three zones, a budding star with game-breaking ability. He’s been a cunning player since shortly after he learned to skate.
“When I started playing hockey, my dad told me to always have my head up, try to be a good playmaker, try to make good passes,” Rossi said. “That was a difference from other parents, because I would say when you are really young, parents always say, try to score, and then we go to a restaurant. My dad just told me to always have your head up.”
His smart play caught the attention of fellow Austrian (and former Red Wing) Thomas Vanek, the fifth overall pick in 2003 and a prolific scorer early in his career. The two have become friends, with Rossi sometimes reaching out to Vanek for advice.
The biggest source of strength, though, is Rossi’s dad. Michael Rossi played hockey himself, as a defenseman, for 20 years in Austria. When it became apparent during his early teenage years that Marco was a special talent, Michael did whatever it took to nurture that.
“When I was 13, he sacrificed so much,” Rossi said. “I would get up in the morning at six, my dad got up at five. I had to go to school and my dad had to go to work. He picked me up at school and then we drove to the (rink), it was like one hour and 30 minutes away, and we came home after practice like at 12 midnight. And I was maybe hungry so he had to cook for me. And then the next day again.
“We did that for four years. My dad lost two jobs in that time. It was really tough for my whole family, especially my dad.”
Now the payoff is almost here. Rossi won’t have the thrill of walking up on the stage at the Bell Forum in Montreal, where the draft was supposed to have been held in late June. Instead he’ll watch the virtual event, with the first round scheduled for Oct. 6, with family and friends in the middle of the night, thanks to Austria being six time zones ahead. If it’s the Wings who call his name, the projection is they get a forward who’ll be a dynamic part of the rebuild.
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her book, The Big 50: The Men and Moments that made the Detroit Red Wings will be published in October by Triumph Books. To preorder, go to Amazon.