The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton devotes his Friday article toward discussing the play of Red Wings prospects Simon Edvinsson, Marco Kasper, Nate Danielson, William Wallinder and Amadeus Lombardi, as observed over the course of training camp and the exhibition season.
I’ve been particularly vocal about Marco Kasper’s adjustment to North American ice and pace, so I’m curious to read what Sam has to say about the Red Wings’ brightest forward prospect:
For the Austrian centerman, this camp has been defined by the process of acquainting himself to the smaller North American ice sheet.
“I think adjusting to North American hockey is a little bit different,” said Lalonde yesterday in reference to Kasper. “And there’s nothing wrong; it’s [that] there’s some different time and space to where he played last year, which I don’t mind, especially for skill development. But you can see even that he has a tendency to want to slow plays down, want to re-group pucks. He had the turnover ended up in the back of our net the other night. He tried a behind-the-back, through-the-legs pass to the D for a regroup, which obviously you don’t see very often and is a no-no in our league, but it’s probably a common play with bigger ice to re-group…I think every game he’s progressively gotten better.”
Discussing rink sizes is something of a cliché when it comes to European prospects’ development, but its significance can’t be over-stated. On a smaller sheet, there are fundamental changes to every reference point a player has, which means plays that would be simple become foreign and complicated, and the time a player has to make decisions will be less with the same number of bodies occupying a smaller surface. The adjustment from NCAA or CHL hockey is almost always about the pace of the NHL game (Nate Danielson attested to as much yesterday, when asked for the biggest change he’s observed from Brandon and the WHL to Red Wings camp), and that’s without having a compressed playing surface to account for.
There’s still plenty to love about Kasper’s mentality and intensity. He is aggressive, simple, and skillful, and that’s a promising combination. Some time in Grand Rapids should serve him well in sharpening his game to the North American sheet, and, as with Edvinsson, I would be surprised if he doesn’t play meaningful NHL minutes by season’s end.
Stockton continues, and I think that it’s less about time and space on the ice and more about the style of play.
If you’ve watched SHL hockey, there’s a significant emphasis on establishing possession in the offensive zone, and then regrouping with a blind pass to the blueline and a couple of passes around the perimeter to really establish control of the puck before teams proceed to attack the net.
It’s a lot like soccer, where you see few rushes up the wing that directly go toward the opposing team’s net, and you see far more attempts to run deep into the zone, up the sidelines, and then attempt to establish possession in the middle of the field/pitch/rink/whatever.
If I may be honest, even Moritz Seider is still unlearning some of those SHL tendencies in terms of “button-hooking” back to regroup or passing to Jake Walman when the Wings establish possession in the offensive zone. We should not assume that it’s easy for a European defender to realize that, at the NHL level, on NHL-sized ice, sometimes the best thing you can do is rip a puck toward the net, or pass it to a forward who’s deeper in the zone.
