GM: Delwin Y
Coach: Dave Hakstol
Last season: 6th overall. In playoffs, lost to Belfast
Ins and Outs
(Season 16 to Season 17)
In: Connor Hellebuyck (free agent), J-G Pageau (free agent), Filip Sveningsson (free agent), Michael Kesselring (draft), Alex Laferriere (draft)
Out: Braden Holtby (free agent), Curtis Lazar (free agent), Devin Shore (free agent), Jakub Vrana (free agent)
Potential Lineup
Nikolaj Ehlers/Jack Eichel/Jordan Eberle
Denis Gurianov/J.G. Pageau/Tobias Rieder
Sarah Nurse/J.T. Miller/Filip Sveningsson
Matias Maccelli/Filip Chytil/Kendall Coyne-Schofield
Olli Maatta/Brady Skjei
Patryk Wajda/Artur Cholach
Jeremy Lauzon/Markus Steinkasserer
Connor Hellebuyck/Carter Hart
A Question
How did Stockholm improve so much last season? Stockholm made a huge 10-place stride last season to finish 6th in the league. There can be no question that the main reason for the success was Jack Eichel, the American center who was snubbed at all-star time only to lead the league in scoring with 115 points. Eichel came to Stockholm in a multi-player Season 6 trade with Munich. He started having real success once he centered wings Nikolaj Ehlers and Jordan Eberle and the EEE Line is back to give it another go. Last season, they terrorized the league. This season, fans are a little worried that the 37-year-old Eberle might not be able to keep up with his linemates. He definitely showed signs of slowing down last year. But Eberle is an inspiration and a great teammate. Inspiration last season also came from 35-year-old goalie Braden Holtby – a legend in their franchise – who backstopped 40 wins and had a .900 save percentage. In the off-season there were three substantial losses of personnel and three substantial additions in the Swedish capital. Holtby finally picked up stakes, packed up skates and moved out, but Connor Hellebuyck was signed to fill that important vacancy. Hellebuyck is more of a question mark than Holtby ever was. He was with Bratislava the previous decade and for some reason the Eagles never really plugged him in as the regular starter. Only once in those 10 years did he play more than half the team’s games, and then it was only 47 games. In Stockholm, he could get the chance to really pile up the starts because they are still waiting for Carter Hart to show that he can make the jump from backup to main man. Stockholm also saw forwards Curtis Lazar and Devin Shore leave town. They were the 4th and 5th leading scorers on the team and Lazar was the team’s top defensive forward. General Manager Delwin Yung was able to replace them with near carbon copies. J-G Pageau will be the new Lazar and Filip Sveningsson will do a more defensive impression of Shore. With Milan last season, the Swede Sveningsson had 70 takeaways to only 39 giveaways.
Rose’s Focus
“If you turned off the Commodore 64, xBox or PS2 last hockey season and you watched some hockey, you might have noticed that the development of Ukrainian defenseman Artur Cholach was meteoric. The 21-year-old top pick in the Season 15 draft is doing so well that he is making his teammate, the 21-year-old fifth pick in the Season 14 draft, look bad. Markus Steinkasserer is supposed to be an offensive defenseman but he only took 50 shots and scored 17 points in 82 games last season for Stockholm. He is getting experience points and he increased his takeaway total from 8 to 32, which is actually pretty impressive, so maybe I’m being too hard on the Italian with the anything-but-Italian name. But Cholach … he seems to really be getting it. He listened to his coaches last year, stopped trying to prove he’s a tough guy, and reduced his penalty minutes from 90 to 58. What did he do with those extra 32 minutes? I had some ideas, but he chose to simply get better at hockey. That’s good too, I guess. His plus/minus went from -25 as rookie to +6. His giveaways went from 75 to 52. Those are pretty stunning stats. On top of that, his point total rose from 17 to 30 and he blocked 12 more shots than he did the year before. Stockholm is only paying him a little more than $1 million this year and next, so it looks like cheapskate GM Delwin Yung really cashed in when he called his name at the draft podium. (By the way, what exactly was that suit you were wearing that day, Delwin? Are you a big Devo fan or something?) As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited about this kid Cholach. He reminds a lot of when I watched Larry Robinson play when he was 21 back in 1972. I bet Artur would look great with Larry’s mustache and curly Afro hairstyle. Maybe I’ll drop that suggestion to him.
