DETROIT — A little over a month ago, Detroit head coach Todd McLellan stood at ice level of the Red Wings’ training camp home in Traverse City, Mich., and grappled with what he called “probably a never-ending question throughout the season.”

The Red Wings knew they’d have Dylan Larkin, their captain and longtime face of the franchise, centering their top line, and that they’d have Lucas Raymond, their leading scorer, on his right. But there was no clear answer as to who might play next to them on the left side.

“If the question does end,” McLellan said, “then we’ve really found somebody.”

Whether he knew it as he spoke, he had just begun the process of doing exactly that.

At that morning’s practice, the coach tried a seemingly unusual option on the top line: the ultimate camp long shot in a 20-year-old 2023 seventh-round pick named Emmitt Finnie.

Finnie had stood out at the team’s prospect tournament a week earlier and had impressed the coach in camp with his tenacity, courage and nonstop motor. As McLellan contrasted players who were “riding the brake a little bit, maybe afraid to make mistakes,” with those who had come to make the team, Finnie stood clearly among the latter.

“I don’t think Emmitt’s been one that’s been riding the brake,” McLellan said. “He’s been full-on gas.”

Five weeks later, Finnie is one of the best stories in hockey.

Not only did Finnie make the Red Wings out of camp, he earned the first crack at that coveted job on Detroit’s top line. All he’s done is run with the opportunity: Finnie is the NHL’s second-leading rookie scorer, with four goals and eight points in his first 10 games. Just as impressive has been his active defensive stick, which, combined with his relentless skating on the forecheck, has him ranked in the league’s top 10 — of any age — with eight takeaways defensively.

NHL rookie points leaders and draft slot

PlayerTeamDraft pickPoints

1. Ivan Demidov

Canadiens

5

9

2. Emmitt Finnie

Red Wings

201

8

2. Zeev Buium

Wild

12

8

4. Matthew Schaefer

Islanders

1

7

4. Oliver Kapanen

Canadiens

64

7

This simply doesn’t happen with seventh-round picks in the modern NHL, at least not this fast.

In fact, when Finnie recorded his fifth point, in a three-point showing against the Edmonton Oilers on Oct. 19, he became the 11th-youngest player picked in the seventh round or later to reach that threshold in league history — and the youngest since Martin Erat in 1999.

All this coming from a player who, in 2022, finished without a single goal in 48 games for Kamloops in his first year in the Western Hockey League.

So, where did Emmitt Finnie come from? Perhaps Finnie is not in this position in spite of his seventh-round draft status, but rather because of what it took for him to be drafted at all.

“I think what he embraced was work,” said former Kamloops associate coach Don Hay. “He kind of put work over skill, and he just found a way.”

When Finnie first joined the Kamloops Blazers at age 16 in the fall of 2021, the Blazers had an emerging star in Logan Stankoven, a top junior goalie in Dylan Garand and a strong mix of returning and soon-to-be NHL draft picks at forward. They were ready to contend.

But for Finnie, a 16-year-old still in the middle of a significant growth spurt, all that talent ahead of him also meant ice time was in short supply.

The Blazers had picked Finnie in the fourth round of the 2020 WHL Bantam Draft, back when the forward was still listed at just 5 feet 3 inches and 110 pounds. When he began his rookie season a year and a half later, Finnie estimates he was “5-9, maybe 5-10.”

He played in 48 of the Blazers’ 68 games that first year, in and out of the lineup and playing a limited role. Even into his second season, he was still playing on the fourth line, well outside the limelight.

But in his limited minutes and behind the scenes, Finnie was working — in the gym, in the video room and on the ice.

If the Blazers power play was on the ice getting practice reps, Kamloops head coach and GM Shaun Clouston recalled, Finnie would be out there against them — learning the penalty-kill structure but also picking up bits of what the power play was doing in the process.

“He was just constantly pushing and finding ways to get better,” Clouston said. “And those things, as the weeks kind of went on, were obvious. He’s pretty light, but he’s getting stronger. He’s a good skater, but he’s getting better. He’s closing the gap with his speed. He’s getting faster. So I mean, all those things were apparent.”

Emmitt Finnie is a seemingly overnight sensation, but his progression is a lot deeper than that. (Allen Douglas / Kamloops Blazers)

Although fourth-line minutes are far from glamorous, they were nonetheless rich with other kinds of opportunity for a player quickly proving he was willing to mine it.

“I feel like it well-rounded my game a lot more,” Finnie said. “I feel more responsible in the D-zone just from that, because I felt like I had to defend to stay in the lineup.”

When the Red Wings beat the Edmonton Oilers earlier this month, McLellan chose to give the bulk of the Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl matchup that night to Larkin’s line — meaning Finnie was going to spend about 16 minutes that night going head-to-head with two of the world’s best players. It’s not a situation many coaches would feel comfortable putting a rookie in. But McLellan trusted Finnie for a simple reason.

“Lack of fear,” he said. “He’s ready for the moment. He just is. He’s a seventh-round draft pick, and here’s what happens: He’s had to work at both ends of the rink. When he was in Kamloops, they had a Memorial Cup-type team, and from what I understand, he was almost an extra piece. He had to earn everything so the coach would put him on the ice.

“Sometimes, the star first-rounder that gets there just based on offense doesn’t have the details that sometimes the others have. Emmitt has both, because he’s had to have both.”

As gradual as Finnie’s evolution may have been, those who witnessed it up close do remember a specific turning point in his draft-eligible season, when he was 17.

Two of his Kamloops teammates, Stankoven and Caeden Bankier, had made Canada’s World Juniors team, leaving a hole high in the Blazers’ forward lineup. Someone was going to have to step up.

“I think at that point, he showed that he was ready,” Clouston said. “Everybody wants more, but not everybody’s ready for more all the time. And he was ready.”

Part of it was physical maturation. Finnie’s growth spurt had continued that summer, and combined with his work in the gym, he had gone from a light 5-foot-9 16-year-old to, suddenly, 6-1 at 17.

“He was literally my size,” the 5-8 Stankoven said, “and then came back the next year and was like just over 6 feet. So, it was crazy.”

Finnie worked to combat any awkwardness in his skating from the growth spurt, and with added size, he was more able to take pucks to the net. With Stankoven and Bankier away, Finnie moved up the lineup, got some time on the power play and picked up a bit more responsibility on the penalty kill.

“It really was a time when he kind of took off,” Hay said.

After being held without a goal in his age-16 season, Finnie couldn’t have been on many NHL teams’ priority watch lists entering his draft year in 2022-23. And playing in the bottom-six, even that season was fairly modest statistically: Finnie finished with nine goals and 35 points in 64 games — an improvement, but not eye-grabbing by any means for a draft-eligible player.

Fortunately for the Red Wings, one of their amateur scouts, Greg Hawgood, lives in Kamloops and played for Hay there in his own junior days. So Detroit knew about Finnie, even if he didn’t always play much when the Red Wings watched him. They liked Finnie’s skating ability, smarts and versatility as a center who could also play wing.

Still, some of the moments Kris Draper — the Red Wings’ assistant general manager and director of amateur scouting — points to from Finnie’s draft year are from games Draper attended to scout other players. There was a playoff game against the Seattle Thunderbirds when one of Kamloops’ forwards was out of the lineup, again elevating Finnie into a bigger role. Or a home-and-home against the Vancouver Giants that Draper attended.

“It’s funny, you kind of hear these stories about how you go in and you’re there to watch somebody else, and someone else kind of catches your eye and pops,” Draper said. “And for us, that was Emmitt.”

So when the Red Wings went on the clock at the 201st pick in the 2023 draft — having already made 10 selections across six rounds that week in Nashville — they decided to take a shot on the late-blooming center from Kamloops.

For a player picked that late in the draft, there are no real expectations. Only seven players picked in seventh round since 2015 have played 100 NHL games.

Still, the Red Wings seemed to know fairly quickly what they had in Finnie.

After taking him in the 2023 offseason, Detroit signed him to an entry-level contract in late March of the next season. By the 2024 prospect tournament in Traverse City, the seventh-rounder was standing out at virtually all of the team’s prospect events. At the tournament, I asked assistant director of player development Dan Cleary about Finnie, and he turned the question right back around.

“You like Finnie?” he said. “Yeah, me too. I like Finnie every time.”

Finnie still returned to junior hockey that season, rejoining a team in a decidedly different place than in his draft year. The Blazers struggled, but Finnie had taken another big step. With all that Memorial Cup star power moving on, he had gone from a supporting piece to a central one.

“I just felt he was at least one of the best forwards in our league,” Clouston said. “If not kind of overall the best player.”

That season, Draper ended up at a game in Kamloops with Hawgood and another of Detroit’s scouts, Bryce Thoma, watching draft-eligible prospects. By the end of the night, the cycle had repeated.

“I just remember texting (Detroit GM) Stevie (Yzerman), ‘Emmitt was really good tonight,’” he said. “And not only, like, producing, but how he was able to play without the puck, how he closed. His stick is so good, and his feet are so good. It’s just — he’s on people so fast.”

That’s the player who arrived at training camp this fall, ready to upend projections.

Emmitt Finnie scored his first NHL goal Oct. 19 against the Edmonton Oilers. (Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images)

The Red Wings have needed someone like Finnie — both his playing style and what he represents for their rebuild.

On the ice, he complements Larkin and Raymond because of his speed and willingness to dig for pucks down low, but also because of his intelligence with the puck. He wins his battle, and then he does something productive with it. He’s fast, fearless and can finish his own chances too.

Detroit has hit on nearly all of its first-round picks under Yzerman, but it’s hard to emerge from a rebuild that way, one player at a time, without finding some surprises too.

It’s early, only 10 games into Finnie’s career, but it’s natural to wonder if the Red Wings might have found their version of Ondrej Palat — a Tampa Bay Lightning seventh-round pick in 2011 who got to the NHL quickly, then became a key piece of their core. Palat, a Yzerman draft pick in Tampa Bay, won the Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2020 and 2021.

Finnie still has a long way to go, but his presence here at all, in the role he has, is already rare enough to invite that kind of dream.

“We’re lucky,” Draper said. “It’s one of those picks that we’re hoping, the way everything’s going, we’re going to look back and (say), ‘This kid did a lot for the Detroit Red Wings.’”