Quote:
Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue
I was really happy with the later rounds. A couple of mock drafts I saw had the Wings taking Joakim Andersson in the first round and the Wings got him in the 3rd. Seems like a good value. As a Wings' fan you can't help but be excited by the guy. First, he's Swedish. The land of Swede has been good, very good to the Wings. His favorite team is the Red Wings and his favorite player is Zetterberg. All good things. Hopefully he'll refine his offensive game and turn into Zetterberg 2.0.
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The knock on Andersson is his skating. I've only seen him once, so I won't comment from personal experience, but just about every scout-report I've read says he's not a good skater. Now.. skating can be taught, so we'll see where he goes from here.
For next season, he's got a junior-pro contract with the big team (Frölunda) and will be practicing with the pro team but officially is still a junior player. He will, however, get a chance to be on the bench for a few pro-games and should get a few shifts during the regular season. If his development curve looks good, I think he'll be sent down to Boras of the second-tier league in Sweden to get some real ice time playing versus men rather than juniors.
Frolunda did that with both Joel and Henrik Lundqvist for one season and they progressed well there rather than playing only with the junior team and getting very little ice time in the Swedish Elite League.