Red Wings Call Up Dries, Leonard, and Tralmaks from Griffins

Detroit stripped Grand Rapids of three of its most productive forwards Wednesday, recalling Sheldon Dries, John Leonard, and Eduards Tralmaks under emergency conditions as the Red Wings braced for potential forward attrition heading into a four-game road trip that opened that night in New Jersey.

The emergency designation was deliberate roster management. With Michael Brandsegg-Nygard already on an emergency recall tied to Dylan Larkin's injury, filing these three moves under emergency conditions allowed Detroit to preserve all five of its post-trade-deadline standard recalls, keeping that depth option intact should the injury situation worsen.

Leonard is the headliner here, and the numbers back that up. In 34 games with the Griffins this season, the 27-year-old winger has 27 goals and 41 points, leading Grand Rapids in both categories. His 1.21 points-per-game rate ranks second in the entire AHL among players with at least 15 games played. He also leads the Griffins with eight game-winning goals and three shorthanded goals, and his 23.3 shooting percentage tops the club. Wednesday's recall came on the same day Leonard returned from a 12-game injury absence that stretched from January 31 through February 28, which raises its own durability questions but also signals how urgently Detroit needed bodies.

This is Leonard's third recall of the season. He came up for over two weeks in December, made his Detroit debut on the 16th against the New York Islanders, then returned for a five-day stint in January. Across those nine spot starts, he produced four points on two goals and two assists, generated 26 shot attempts, averaged 12:01 of ice time per game, and shot at a 22.2 percent clip. Efficient, if limited. Last season with the Charlotte Checkers, Leonard put up 61 points in 72 regular-season games, earned a spot on the AHL's Second All-Star Team, and then added 14 points in 18 playoff contests. He signed a one-way, league-minimum deal with Detroit last summer, betting on himself to crack an NHL lineup.

Dries brings a different kind of value: nine years of AHL credibility and 122 NHL games already on his resume with the Colorado Avalanche and Vancouver Canucks. The 31-year-old Macomb, Michigan native has 37 points on 20 goals and 17 assists in 48 Griffins games this season, with a career-high plus-22 rating. He leads Grand Rapids with seven power-play goals and 124 shots on net. Dries scored his 20th goal of the campaign on March 4 against the Rockford IceHogs, giving him three consecutive 20-goal seasons in the AHL. For a team navigating an injury-depleted forward group, Dries offers a veteran who knows how to play in a bottom-six NHL role without a learning curve.

Tralmaks rounds out the trio. The Griffins forward represented Latvia at the 2026 Winter Olympics, but detailed AHL statistics for his current season were not immediately available from the club's release.

Grand Rapids entered this stretch of the season at 43-9-4, one of the more dominant records in recent AHL history. Pulling Dries, Leonard, and Tralmaks simultaneously is a significant ask of that roster, even if the Griffins have the depth to absorb it. For Leonard especially, this recall arrives at the right moment: if he can carry even a fraction of his AHL production into Detroit's lineup, a longer stay than his previous five-day and two-week stints becomes a real possibility.