Steve Yzerman pumps the brakes on Moritz Seider.

The Detroit Red Wings fan base is, rather understandably, excited at the prospect of seeing young defenseman Moritz Seider make his National Hockey League debut next season but recently general manager Steve Yzerman appeared to pump the breaks when it comes to his top prospect on the blue line.

Speaking with Red Wings insider Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press, Yzerman seemed to want to temper the expectations fans have for Seider. There's good reason a general manager would want to do so, first and foremost the Red Wings have not been a good team as of late and there's going to be a limited amount of impact a defenseman can make on a struggling roster but perhaps more importantly is the fact that defensemen tend to need longer to transition to the NHL than players at other positions.

"I want to temper the enthusiasm and the excitement," said Yzerman as per St. James. "He's a great young player. His next move is to the NHL. We'll see how training camp, the preseason, goes. It's a huge step up from the American league or the Swedish league to the NHL, but he probably exceeded our expectations last year going into the American league, he did very well.

"He's got size. His skills are good. He's got a lot of work to do, but I think there's a lot of potential for him. We're excited to have him over here next year. Our hope is he's ready to play for the Red Wings at the start of the season."

Seider looked strong during his time in the American Hockey League with the Red Wings AHL affiliate team the Grand Rapids Griffins, recording 2 goals and 20 assists for 22 points over 49 games. In his most recent season, which was spent playing at the highest tier of Swedish hockey in the Swedish Hockey League he recorded 7 goals and 21 assists for 28 points over his 41 games in that league.

The next logical step for the German born defenseman is to make the jump to the NHL, but it seems clear to me that Yzerman does not want to see any undue pressure placed on one of his top prospects and would instead prefer to allow him to develop at a pace that will yield the greatest long term benefit possible for the Red Wings organization.