Detroit Hockey Now’s Nate Brown posted “2 truths and a lie” about Simon Edvinsson, and this one–a suggestion that Edvinsson might start the year in Detroit–isn’t much of a stretch:
Sure, Yzerman went out and signed Ben Chiarot, Robert Hagg, and Mark Pysyk, all of whom add to the blue line. Chiarot stands to be a first or potentially a second pairing guy. Where does that leave Edvinsson? If you take into account what Yzerman said back in July, maybe he’s in a pretty good spot. Especially now that he signed some depth.
“His skating his excellent. We’re optimistic,” Yzerman said. “We’ll give him an opportunity. If he’s ready to play and play a regular role that would be great for us. We’ll just kind of let the whole thing play itself out, but the World Juniors will be a great stepping stone coming into training camp to try to make an impression and earn a spot on the team.”
More on that World Juniors comment later.
Yzerman’s goal beyond filling the team with premium talent is making sure that his young and upcoming prospects are surrounded by the right players. Though Nick Leddy’s numbers weren’t eye-popping in Detroit, his experience in the league was able to help Seider along the way. Marc Staal’s mentoring also factored into another season with Detroit.
The same is being applied here, though Seider is now in the fold and likely an early front runner to have an A sewn onto his sweater. Seider might be an anomaly in that sense, but Yzerman has now in Seider what they need. Edvinsson will continue to build onto that.
Continued; I’m not expecting Edvinsson to make the team out of training camp unless he both impresses and there’s an injury on the blueline, but we saw both things happen in order to afford Lucas Raymond a shot with the big club out of training camp and the exhibition season a year ago.
