Athanasiou close to joining Red Wings

Oct 21, 2017 - 2:23 AM The Detroit Red Wings agreed in principle to a one-year deal with restricted free-agent forward Andreas Athanasiou on Friday.

The deal, for $1.3875 million, will not become official until the Red Wings clear enough cap space to fit Athanasiou in.

"Here to announce we've agreed to a one-year contract with Andreas Athanasiou, pending some things need to happen," Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said. "He's in Europe, he needs to travel back from Europe. Monday morning we're going to apply for his work visa to work in the United States. Obviously, once he gets here he has to pass a physical."

The speedy 23-year-old, who scored 18 goals and had 29 points along with a minus-7 rating in 64 games last season, held out of training camp waiting for a deal and was considering offers overseas.

In 101 games with the Red Wings since the 2015-16 season, Athanasiou has 27 goals and 16 assists while adding one goal in five postseason games.

"Certainly, a player at 23 years of age you project he should improve," Holland said. "How good are young players going to be, you never know until you watch the process play itself out. But when he's up and running we think he's a player who's going to make our team better."

He was originally drafted by the Red Wings in the fourth round in 2012. He will likely begin the season in the AHL on a conditioning assignment after he is officially signed, and it could be some time before he joins the NHL club.

"He went to Europe to skate and certainly I'm sure he's in decent shape but as we've seen with people who are injured they got to go through a process of practicing every day to get into game shape," Holland said. "He's missed all of training camp. We're still talking another week or so to get his paperwork to allow him to work in the United States. Three weeks of training camp, three weeks of the season, you start talking about being six weeks behind.

"To be fair to Andreas, it's not like you're just going to jump into a roster and you're ... those were some of the things we talked about Monday in a conference call with Andreas, his agent, Darren Ferris, (Red Wings coach) Jeff Blashill and I, we talked about integrating him into the team."