The latest dismantling of Stockholm’s EURO Hockey League team has begun. Dustin Brown has been traded to Moscow for two players.
Dustin Brown now in Moscow
Leaving Moscow and heading to Sweden are homegrown Marcus Johansson and American James Van Riemsdyk. Van Riemsdyk had 5 goals and 8 assists for Spartak, while Johansson had 6 goals and 5 assists. Brown had 9 goals and 16 assists for the Eagles.
Earlier in the week, Eagles GM Michael Sauer made it clear his top players are for sale. Mike Richards and Rick Nash were called out along with Brown for a failed experiment that Stockholm is pulling the plug on just 25 games into the season.
Marcus Johansson back in his homeland.
Jakub Petruzalek, a 22-year-old Czech, seems to have lost his fourth-line center job thanks to the move. Johansson is likely to see more ice time in Stockholm than he did in Moscow, and his numbers show he can add some offensive spice to a lineup. He scored 12 goals and added 20 or more assists in each of his first two seasons in Moscow and was on a pace to approach 20 goals this season, all while averaging about 7 minutes per game. He is likely to be slotted into the number 3 line and push Craig Smith down. That’s while Richards is still with the team, that is.
Van Riemsdyk traded to Stockholm.
On the left side, Van Riemsdyk might have just become a top line forward for the first time in his EURO career. He and Derick Brassard will audition for that spot over the next several games.
League-leading Moscow and coach Glen Gulutzan will avoid that kind of competition on the left wing by moving Brown to the right wing. Andrew Ladd, who came to Moscow at the trade deadline last year in an exchange with Copenhagen, has been a key part of Spartak’s success this season, playing the left side of a line that includes Anze Kopitar and Aleksey Morozov.
The Ithaca, N.Y.-born Brown’s journey to Russia has had stops in Guelph, Ont., Los Angeles, Zurich (a 16-game stint with the other Zurich team during the NHL lockout), Milan and Stockholm. He plays a lot like Ladd and both are captain material.
Gulutzan has several options to fill his new fourth-line center hole. Anton Lander, a natural center, and wings Rene Bourque, Travis Moen and Alexei Ponikarovsky are waiting in the wings with center Derek Roy currently playing out of position on the right wing of Moscow’s third line. He might just slide over to the left on that line as Morozov makes way for Brown and looks for a new lineup home.
