Red Wings prospect Albin Grewe spoke with HockeyNews.se’s Alexander Nilsson recently regarding the 21-year-old winger’s bumpy road over the past couple of seasons. Here’s a rough translation of their conversation:
Grewe about his strange time in Finland and the missed move to Canada
SUNDSVALL, Sweden. His OHL dreams crashed. The move to Finland was a flop, and then he was absent for two months. Albin Grewe’s last couple of hockey years have been messy.
“I think it was strange that they took me in from the beginning, to be honest,” he tells HockeyNews.se about his short stay in Finland.
Fiery forward Albin Grewe had been able to show himself in the SHL with Djurgarden and on the Swedish national junior team before Detroit drafted him in the 3rd round [66th overall] in the 2019 draft.
A year later, Grewe, together with Detroit and Djurgarden, concluded that playing in the Canadian Major Junior league the OHL was the best way forward.
The now 21-year-old forward had therefore prepared himself for a move to North America in 2020, but that didn’t happen.
Due to the pandemic, the start of the OHL season was postponed, and Grewe remained with Djurgarden before he had to go over [the Atlantic] at the end of the 2020-2021 season, then for games in the AHL with Grand Rapids.
“It was tough. I would have liked to go over and play in the OHL, I think it would have been good for me to play over there high up in the lineup and get a lot of confidence, which was the plan. So it was clear that when it didn’t turn out that way, it was a shame. But I earned the chance to play in the SHL instead, which I thought was incredibly fun,” says Grewe to HockeyNews.se.
After the short adventure in the USA, he chose to play in Finland for Ilves [Tampere] during last season.
But he only played four games there before he moved back to Sweden.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to go home, it was more like it didn’t click. It was difficult. Sometimes you come to a team where it doesn’t really work, and I felt that it didn’t work for me there. I don’t think they trusted me, in my opinion. I thought it was weird that they brought me in [there] in the first place, to be honest. It was like they didn’t even want me there, so I felt that it was just as well to leave,” he says, and he continues:
“I don’t know what it was, but they didn’t want to play me, so why should I just stay over there and watch the games?”
Shortly after his break-up with Ilves, he was introduced [as a member of] Mora IK [of the Swedish Allsvenskan].
But there, too, he wasn’t particularly successful at first.
After seven games, he was injured, and missed a month, playing three more games before being forced to rest for another month [due to a concussion —George’s note].
Grewe then posted 13 points in 22 Allsvenskan games before there were another 5 points in 8 playoff games.
“Of course it was very tough, and I felt like crap here and there with the injury. ‘Well, what to do now, then? I came here to play hockey, and I’m not doing it now,’ I thought. But I think I came back pretty well after that. It felt really good, so I will take that into this season with me,” he says.
Perhaps the security of knowing where he’s playing the entire season will contribute to even better performances.
“It has been the case that I have started over with a new ball [in my court] the whole time, but now I was here last season as well, and now I’m with them from the start, which feels good. It’s security to know that I’m included here. We want to fight for the top spot in the regular season and then be in the playoffs, for sure.”
The hot rumor last year was the Grewe was sidelined repeatedly when he joined Mora IK because he was trying to play through a concussion, and that he was shut down as a result.
Grewe, remembered for his nickname, “T-Rex,” and his abrasive style of play, has…
Let’s just say he’s been a bit abrasive off the ice, too, and I can’t imagine that the Red Wings were happy that he came over to play 11 games for Grand Rapids before heading off to Finland for the next season.
I can’t say that he’s no longer a prospect at all of 21 years of age, but his status as dropping down to the Swedish AHL after his unsuccessful Finnish campaign, combined with his injury issues and middling production don’t speak superbly for his chances.
He didn’t attend the Wings’ summer development camp, either, though I can’t say with any sort of certainty whether he was able to squeeze the camp into his summer schedule.
In terms of notable omissions from the summer development camp, Grewe, Ryan O’Reilly, Jack Adams, Antti Tuomisto, AHL-contracted Kirill Tyutyayev, Pasquale Zito, Gustav Berglund, Joren Van Pottelberghe are either in or out of the Red Wings’ plans at this point, and 2022 draft picks Dmitri Buchelnikov, Maximilian Kilpinen, Anton Johansson didn’t attend the summer camp, either.
For the 2022 picks, the short turnaround between draft and camp (and, in Buchelnikov’s case, sanctions against Russia) were the main reason why they didn’t attend…
And, getting back to Grewe, he’s going to have to have a solid season while avoiding further injuries to get back into the “potential future Red Wing” equation.
