Veteran Garnet Exelby has polished his play over the years to become a dependable defenseman coveted by coaches.

Coaches can teach skating, stickhandling and how to play defense, but one thing they can’t teach is experience.

So when the Detroit Red Wings saw an opportunity to add Garnet Exelby in the offseason, the NHL club signed the veteran blueliner to provide depth within the organization.

When he was assigned to Grand Rapids, Exelby was a natural choice to become the captain of the Griffins. He entered the 2011-12 season having played in 408 NHL games, nearly as many as his 22 other teammates combined.

Griffins head coach Curt Fraser believes Exelby has been everything he was advertised to be and more.

“I think he’s been even better than we thought,” Fraser said. “He’s a good leader on the ice as well as in the locker room. He’s been a real stabilizing force who helps all of our young defensemen, plus he’s physical and can find the back of the net once in a while, which is a bonus.”

There’s no secret to why a player like Exelby is a good fit on a young team like the Griffins. He is the epitome of “what you see is what you get” – a strong defenseman who isn’t afraid to pressure the opposition and who likes to throw his weight around when the opportunity presents itself.

The more minutes under his belt, the more likely that center Joakim Andersson will earn a job in Detroit.

If there’s one thing that works to the advantage of a young hockey player, it’s time.

For Swedish prospect Joakim Andersson, who turns just 23 on Feb. 5, it means everything.

Time to improve his English. Time to get more comfortable with living in a new country. Time to adapt to smaller rinks and a more physical style of hockey. Time to improve his skating and quickness. Time to strengthen his play at both ends of the ice. Time to teach his teammates how to correctly pronounce his name.

“It’s ‘you-uh-kim,’” said the affable Andersson, who hears his name pronounced “joke-im” time after time; so often, in fact, that he is resigned to living with the American pronunciation.

Now in his second season with the Griffins, Andersson is starting to show why the Detroit Red Wings selected him in the third round (88th overall) in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.

Defenseman Brian Lashoff is making noise this season by playing to his strengths.

Brian Lashoff enjoys playing the blues, but he has no interest in singing them.

When the young defenseman reported for training camp this past fall, he was anxious to put last year behind him. He had no desire to turn a frustrating season of shoulder and ankle injuries into a refrain.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a year like that,” Lashoff said. “I can look back at it now because I came out of it in a good way. I got physically stronger and mentally tougher.”

Not being able to skate might have made him a better guitar player – he’s been plugging in an electric guitar since he was 11 – but it put him no closer to his dream of playing on the NHL stage.

Limited to 37 games a year ago due to injuries, Lashoff added a few pounds and trained with his older brother Matt, a defenseman in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ system, in an effort to get bigger and stronger.

At age 21, he is still a raw talent, but he’s no less motivated to prove all those scouts wrong.

Passed over by every team in the annual NHL draft, Lashoff was signed by the Red Wings in 2008 after he impressed the organization with a strong performance as a free agent invitee to the team’s camp.

The Griffins Youth Foundation gives kids of all types a chance to play hockey.

Daniel Urban is not your average ice hockey player, nor is he your typical kid.
   
The 11-year-old boy has Asperger’s syndrome, which is an autism spectrum disorder found in otherwise normally functioning children who encounter difficulties in social interaction and exhibit restricted or repetitive patterns of behavior.

You might not expect to find someone like Daniel even skating on the ice, let alone playing hockey on a team with others. Kids with Asperger’s syndrome can be socially awkward or physically clumsy, not exactly a positive prescription for playing a challenging game like hockey.

Thanks to the Grand Rapids Griffins Youth Foundation, Daniel is getting the opportunity to not only enjoy the sport he loves, but also to excel beyond expectations.

During a youth hockey game on a recent Saturday, Daniel celebrated scoring three goals on the same shift, an incredible accomplishment for anyone, especially someone who could barely skate when he started.

“It’s an amazing opportunity,” said Daniel, who is in his second year in the program but his first playing alongside his six-year-old brother Gabriel. “I wouldn’t be able to play if not for the Griffins Youth Foundation.”

Chris Conner exhibits the kind of determination that puts him head and shoulders above most players in the AHL.

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky famously said that the secret to being a great player is skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

The truth is that the puck seems to find some players more than others. Whether they’re quicker, cover more ground, hungrier or just have better hockey instincts, certain players are like magnets when the puck is around them.

Chris Conner is one of those players – a contention confirmed as much by his gap-toothed grin as by his statistics, which show that he’s scored at nearly a point-per-game pace at the AHL level.

Conner has been missing both of his front teeth plus a third tooth almost his entire professional career. After wearing a helmet cage during his collegiate career at Michigan Tech, he lost all three on the same play in 2006. It was only his fifth game as a pro.

“I was thinking I still had the cage. I remember looking at the puck like it was going to hit the cage and there was nothing there,” he said, recalling the cross-ice pass from a teammate that led to his dental disaster.

“I knew the puck had hit me in the mouth, but I still went to forecheck until I felt something come out of my mouth and I started tasting blood.