Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff took note of the upward ascent of Jonatan Berggren’s game under coach Todd McLellan:
“I feel like maybe I was thinking a little bit too much about don’t make mistakes in the beginning,” Berggren said.
[Coach Derek] Lalonde’s emphasis – some might say overemphasis – on Berggren’s play without the puck certainly was stifling his creative instincts.
“It was a lot of focus on my defensive game and I feel like in that aspect that I’ve grown a lot this season,” Berggren acknowledged. “But then maybe you think a little bit too much that like ‘oh, I don’t want to kind of mess this up,’ but mistakes will happen. That’s what you grow and learn from. The most important thing is you play your game and have trust in you and have confidence that I can be an offensive player.”
From the day McLellan took up residence in the Detroit coach’s office, it was apparent that there was going to be a seismic shift in the way Berggren was both deployed and appreciated.
“Yeah, we had a meeting that he told me like let it loose, kind of like he wanted me to play offense,” Berggren said. “He knows that I had my skills is in offensive game. So it was nice confidence boost for me to have the coach trust to maybe do a mistake. Then of course it’s not like toe drags on the blue but like be an offensive player and have the confidence to do it, too.”
Continued; as Duff notes, Berggren’s posted 5 goals and 5 assists for 10 points in the 21 games under coach McLellan, and he looks like a player who belongs at the NHL level in a supporting/secondary scoring role, which is good to see.
