Red Wings’ Dominik Shine’s journey to the NHL is the ultimate underdog story
Detroit Red Wings forward Dominik Shine made his NHL debut on Monday night after the Red Wings signed the Michigan native to a two-year contract. The deal is for the remainder of this season and the 2025-26 campaign.
Shine has spent his entire professional career with the Red Wings’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins. After a four-year career at Northern Michigan University, Shine immediately joined the Griffins late in 2017 and has become a fan favorite.
Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Steven Ellis and Matt Larkin shine (no pun intended) some light on Dominik Shine’s first NHL game and the story around his career.
Matt Larkin: Dominik Shine made his debut at 31 years old. It’s a crazy interesting story, a late bloomer. What can you tell us about him, because I admittedly I don’t know much.
Steven Ellis: Yeah, like this is a guy that was drafted eligible like when I was still in high school like 2011. So it’s been a while since he actually kind of really grew on the scene here. And you look at his college career. We’ll start even further, he’s born in Michigan. He played with Little Caesars and then the Detroit Compuware minor hockey programs two very powerful ones. Then he goes and plays four years at Northern Michigan, not exactly a hockey powerhouse. But, he had a couple of good seasons, never a point-per-game player, but just always really consistently one of the best players.
Steven Ellis: Then he goes and spends the next couple of years of the Grand Rapids Griffins, really wasn’t much more than just a tough guy, like, oh, he might get 25 or 30 points. Like last year he had 33 points. Well, this year he’s a legitimate star in the AHL. He’s got 32 points and 40 games. He’s also still one of the more physical players, but he really kind of grew on early as the season went on where, yeah, this guy might legitimately be a nice depth piece for the Red Wings. Will he play a lot of games? I don’t expect it, but was it really cool to see him play for his hometown team, the team he cheered for in a state he never really left beyond a couple of years in the USAHL.