SKATE LIKE THE WIND

Growing up in Minnesota, Nick Jensen loved the outdoors. He played soccer, football and hockey, the latter often on the frozen ponds that dotted the landscape – the state is known as “The Land of 10,000 Lakes” for a reason.

His father, Jeff, had played college hockey at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie back in the ‘70s, and he steered his son in the direction of becoming a defenseman.

"His idea was that finding good, fast, puck-moving defensemen is pretty rare," Jensen said. "He felt that if you can get those things down, you can definitely go places with it."

Although Jensen was athletic and excelled at all sports – he was an all-conference running back and free safety on the Rogers High School football team – hockey was his first love.

His father was chosen by the Colorado Rockies in the 10th round (159th overall) of the 1978 NHL Amateur Draft; his mother Teresa was originally from Michigan (Flint), which made the Detroit Red Wings his favorite team.

"They always tell the story about how they were walking through a sporting goods store and picked up a pair of skates and how I started crying when they put them back. I don't know if it's true, but it's the story they told."

Jensen began skating before he started school. "My dad would take me out before he played in the beer leagues and he'd help me skate around the rink even though I couldn't stand up on my own," he said.

His dad served as his coach for many years, even offering words of advice when he was playing for other coaches during his high school years in Rogers, a city that straddles Interstate 94 northwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

"He gave me his input and it definitely helped, even though at the time it seemed like he was only yelling at me," said Jensen, who admits that his father was his toughest critic. "It was constructive criticism in its own way."

Jensen passed up his senior year at Rogers to move to Green Bay to play elite junior hockey in the United States Hockey League. "I wanted to keep my amateur status in order to attend college. It was the path that most Minnesota guys took," he said.

He played two seasons (2008-10) for the Green Bay Gamblers. His billet family lived five minutes from Lambeau Field, so he even got to see a couple of Packers games. "They say there is not a bad seat in the house and it's true," he notes.

Jensen was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings after his first year in Green Bay.

"I was driving back from a wedding in Texas when I got a call from Dave Kolb, one of the Red Wings’ scouts. We talked for a few minutes and I remember thinking, 'What was that all about?’

"When I got home, I was dog-tired. It was the second day of the draft and I got a call from my coach, Jon Cooper, who is now the head coach at Tampa Bay, and he told me I had been drafted. I was pretty shocked."

Detroit had selected Jensen in the fifth round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft with the 150th overall pick.

Jiri Fischer, director of player development for the Red Wings, said the organization felt fortunate that Jensen had "slipped" to the fifth round. "He competes as hard as anybody (and) he can fly on the ice," Fischer said of Jensen. "He can skate as well as anybody."

When it came time for Jensen to make a decision about college, he did not have to look far. St. Cloud State had shown the most interest in him early, and he wanted to play close to home.

"My parents put a lot of time and effort into my hockey as I was growing up – they worked, but they travelled with me, paid for ice time, paid for teams, paid for hotels and all that stuff – so I wanted them to be able to watch me further my career," he said. "It was important to me to stay close to home so they could do that."

A finance major at St. Cloud, Jensen steadily improved each year until he was chosen WCHA Defensive Player of the Year after his junior season in 2012-13, when he helped lead the Huskies to their first Frozen Four appearance.

"College was a lot of fun," Jensen said. "Getting to play hockey while making progress toward your education is pretty cool. You can't play hockey forever, which is the main reason for going to college."

Nevertheless, Jensen opted to forego his senior year and final season of eligibility in order to sign a two-year entry-level contract with the Red Wings.

"It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made," he said. "I talked to a lot of people, including my coaches, my parents and my fiancee. It was not an easy decision, but I ended up deciding that signing pro was the best thing for me.

"Of course, I would like that senior year back, but I wanted to move up to the next level so I could keep progressing in my game. The ultimate goal is to play in the NHL, of course, but it was still hard to leave because I can never go back and play college hockey again."

His pro debut ended up being delayed after a tussle with fellow prospect Tyler Bertuzzi in Detroit’s summer development camp left him with a shoulder injury that required surgery.

"As soon as I found out that I needed surgery, my heart sank to my stomach," Jensen said. "It was pretty frustrating. I was ready to get my pro career going and to have that happen, it was tough mentally."

While Jensen admits that it was an incident that didn't have to happen, it might have saved him some grief down the road. "One of the doctors thought I might already have had some damage in there, so it could have happened in the middle of this year – and that would have been way worse," he said.

Going through the rehab process – healing and staying positive – wasn't easy, according to Jensen. "I wouldn't have been able to get through it without all my friends and family," he admitted. "It was a good test of character. I think it will help me battle through adversity – not letting things get the best of you."

Jensen made his professional debut with the ECHL's Toledo Walleye in late November 2013 then played his first AHL game with the Griffins in early December. "Jumping into a pro league where I had never played was tough, but the team eased me into things," he said. "I didn't play too much, but once I got going, I started developing like I had hoped. It just happened a little later than I expected."

He played 45 games, racking up nine assists while being a plus-12. He started to blossom in March when he collected an assist in three consecutive games, then earned assists in back-to-back games.

This past fall marked his first true Red Wings training camp. "The first one is a bit of a blur since I was in the training room or weight room doing rehab," said Jensen, who finally got to play some NHL exhibition games. "I was really nervous, but it was a lot of fun at the same time."

He averaged nearly 19 minutes a game in four exhibitions, scoring a goal and posting a plus-1 rating. His preseason play improved his stock. Suddenly, he was on everybody's radar as a defensive prospect, joining the likes of Xavier Ouellet, Ryan Sproul, Alexey Marchenko and Mattias Backman.

"I hope I made a good impression," Jensen said. "I talked to Kenny Holland and Mike Babcock before they sent me down and they had good things to say. I just need to keep gaining experience and improving my resume."

Jensen concedes that there is room for improvement. Consistency is the biggest thing. "It's not enough to have a good game here or there," he said. "You want to have a pretty good game every time out, not just average, average, good."

He had already scored three goals by the end of November, as he made a concerted effort to improve his breakouts from the defensive zone. "That's what Detroit wants, guys who can take the puck from the D-zone and turn it into offense," he said.

Indeed, it's his ability as a puck-moving defenseman that is likely to earn him a spot in the NHL. "By NHL standards, he's not the biggest guy, but he makes up for it with his ability to skate and his ability to transport the puck," Holland said.

Jensen realizes that it's his wheels that will eventually get him to Detroit. "My dad emphasized that speed is the name of the game and everybody in the NHL can skate like the wind, so you need to be able to skate," he said.

"My mindset is every shift is pedal to the floor. It's like playing the last shift in a Stanley Cup game. I feel like every shift has got to be played like that and that's how I try to approach the game. It doesn't matter if it's in the NHL or it's down here."

Jensen looks at the fact that he is just one of several high-end prospects as a positive, not a negative.

"You don't want to earn a spot by default just because there's nobody better," he said. "Having competition among all these young defensemen is a good thing because if one guy plays well, all of the others want to play well, too. It may seem like we're competing against each other, but we're really just making each other better. And getting better is what we are all here to do."