Chase Stillman is healthy again, and the Detroit Red Wings have put that fact on the waiver wire.
On Thursday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that the organization placed the forward on waivers after he recovered from a preseason injury, a move that points him toward the American Hockey League’s Grand Rapids Griffins to open the season if he clears.
The assignment would mark another stop in a career that has already covered more ground than most players his age.
New Jersey selected Stillman 29th overall in the 2021 NHL Draft, yet he did not begin playing in the organization until 2023-24.
The gap between draft night and his professional debut was an early signal that the path would not be straightforward, and the production that followed has never matched the expectations attached to a late first-round pick.
What Stillman has offered instead is a style that teams keep trying to harness. He can slide onto any of the four forward lines, and he plays with a motor that does not ease off before the whistle.
That energy has been the most consistent part of his game since junior hockey. The scoring has not kept pace. Even in the Ontario Hockey League he was never a high-volume offensive player, and that profile has carried into the pros.
His first full season with the Utica Comets was the closest thing to a breakthrough: 14 goals and 24 points in 54 games, with a minus-2 rating. The next year the numbers fell off sharply, to three goals and nine points in 46 games.
New Jersey eventually moved him to Pittsburgh in the deal that brought Cody Glass to the Devils. Stillman finished that campaign with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, adding one goal and three points in nine games.
Pittsburgh’s interest did not last. Four months after acquiring him, the Penguins sent Stillman to Vancouver for goaltender Arturs Silovs. The change of address brought another interruption.
His 2025-26 season, spent entirely with the Abbotsford Canucks, ended early when he suffered a broken fibula.
Clearing waivers would send him to a fourth organization before he has established himself in the NHL. Grand Rapids is not a soft landing.
The Griffins were among the American Hockey League’s best teams last season, finishing 51-16-4 and joining Providence and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton as the only clubs to reach 100 points.
For Stillman, the waiver placement is less a verdict than another chance to show that the work rate can finally produce the results that have trailed him from New Jersey to Pittsburgh to Vancouver and now, possibly, to Detroit’s affiliate.
