One of the main reasons why the Red Wings signed Michael Brandsegg-Nygard to an entry-level contract was to afford the team more control over the player’s status, and in this fall’s case, the Wings wanted to see what he could do over the course of this upcoming weekend’s Prospect Games and main training camp.
Today, the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood discusses expectations for the 18-year-old…
Given the rarity of such a situation as Brandsegg-Nygard’s, it’s hard to define what exactly one should expect from him. While he has a chance to make the NHL roster at this camp, the likelihood of him doing so isn’t very high given the established NHLers Detroit has under contract. Yet, considering Brandsegg-Nygard is already under contract in Sweden on a championship-defending Skelleftea team, Detroit bringing him over means that there’s some overall purpose to this training camp appearance.
As far as the meaning of his training camp appearance, there’s a chance that a strong showing could give Brandsegg-Nygard an opportunity to play in a better league than the SHL — even if the NHL spots are spoken for, he could earn an AHL roster spot if he performs well in camp. At the AHL level, his checking and shot would still be useful while allowing him to acclimate to North American play styles. He could also add some depth to a Grand Rapids roster that is aiming at playoff success later in the season. If Brandsegg-Nygard earns this opportunity, that would be an encouraging sign for both him and the Red Wings organization as a whole.
As one of the more pro-ready prospects in his draft class, Brandsegg-Nygard’s forechecking ability and strong shot should hold up against established pros he’s competing against. He even showed the effectiveness of those skills in his SHL appearances so far this preseason and season, jamming opponents with body checks and scoring a handful of goals.
Now, it’s important to note that there’s an apparent talent gap between Sweden and the NHL. Just because he performs well in the SHL doesn’t mean he’ll automatically thrive during training camp. But that therein shows another reason why this camp is so important for him: it’s as much an educational field trip as it is a job interview.
Continued; Eargood hits the nail on the head in his last paragraph.
Brandsegg-Nygard has been very blunt in the Swedish press–he wants to play for Skelleftea AIK of the SHL in order to make the logical jump from Mora IK of the HockeyAllsvenskan, a league below the SHL.
Unless he blows the doors off the competition, Brandsegg-Nygard won’t be competing for a job in Grand Rapids or Detroit, but the Red Wings clearly feel that he’s good enough to hold his own over the course of an NHL training camp (already), and as such, they’re both interviewing him and giving him a taste of the kind of competition that he’s going to face when he is ready to cross the Atlantic on a full-time basis.
I also wonder whether this is going to become more of a standard operating procedure for the Red Wings’ higher-round European prospects, given the shock factor of the kind of travel that Europeans face at the AHL level, but we’ll see whether that’s just my gut feeling, or something more.
