A completed trade between the Detroit Red Wings and the Nashville Predators has a clear winner

The Detroit Red Wings acquired Finnish forward Jesse Kiiskinen and a second-round pick from the Nashville Predators ahead of last year's draft, in a deal that sent shutdown defender Andrew Gibson back the other way. The Wings followed the deal up by flipping the second-round pick to the San Jose Sharks, as a sweetener to get the team to acquire NHL defenseman Jake Walman. Detroit acquired nothing of value in their ditching of Walman - and even then, their pre-draft swap of Kiiskinen and Gibson already appears to be paying dividends.

Highlighted by PHR in a recent column, it was ultimately a score for Steve Yzerman's trade at the draft.

It was on the heels of those international performances that Nashville chose to trade the Finnish winger - surely hoping that they could bank on a few strong performances masking an otherwise quiet year. But, on top of their many blunders this year, Nashville was also forced to pay for their impatience with Kiiskinen - as he emerged as one of Finland's top underage talents this season. The skillful winger broke out in full this year, with 30 assists and 44 points in 46 Liiga games. That scoring stands as the most a U20 Liiga player has scored since Aleksi Heponiemi (46 points in 2018-19), Sebastian Aho (45 points, 2015-16), and Aleksander Barkov (48 points in 2012-13). In fact, 14 of the 15 names at the top of the Liiga's U20 scoring leaderboards have gone on to play in the NHL. With this scoring output, Kiiskinen also joins peers like Teuvo Teravainen, Jani Nyman, Juuso Parssinen, and Kaapo Kakko.