Are Swedish prospects overrated?

[JAS 39 Gripen]

Nah, not anymore than prospects from other countries.
Id say canadian prospects are a little overrated, cuz thay havnt really shown anything except playing against 16-18 year old kids until they make the NHL/AHL

 

[SChan*]

And Lidstrom is still Swedens best player and he is how old?

so then all prospects from all nations are bad? Lidstrom won leagues back defender last season

 

[MrGeno101]

so then all prospects from all nations are bad? Lidstrom won leagues back defender last season

well u begin to wonder when a 37 years old goalie won the Conn Smythe trophy and a 41 years old won the Norris trophy and now a 39 years old Jagr who has play in Russia for some years can dominate in the preseason

For the question, Yes i think some are overrating swedish prospect, but all nation does that. And yes sweden has produce some good player last couple of year, but they are not close to Canada as some are saying. I think they are in same category as Russia and USA. Russia may has more top end talent, but sweden produce alot of good all round player who NHL teams love too have..

 

[Minister of Offence]

I think in general on the HF boards the Swedish prospects are overrated a bit, but not in all cases. I think MPS in Edmonton had way more hype than he deserved, same with Linus Omark. I also think Landeskog is somewhat overrated, he's a great all round player but I don't think he's the elite scorer you'd expect from a top 5 pick. However there are some guys who deserve the hype, Hedman in Tampa looks like he deserves every bit of hype he gets and the kid Zibenajad in Ottawa is also deserving of his status as a top prospect.

Yes. This.

 

[adsfan]

Yes and no. Some are, some aren't. I have seen Jonas Andersson and Antti Pihlstrom play in Milwaukee. Both had great offensive skills but their defense was terrible.

Antti scored 57 points for Milwaukee in 93 games, but was only +4. Jonas scored 54 points in 172 games, but was -2. His seasons were 4, 2 and -8, so his defense became worse with each season.

Both players were speedy skaters, so that wasn't the problem.

 

[SChan*]

Yes and no. Some are, some aren't. I have seen Jonas Andersson and Antti Pihlstrom play in Milwaukee. Both had great offensive skills but their defense was terrible.

Antti scored 57 points for Milwaukee in 93 games, but was only +4. Jonas scored 54 points in 172 games, but was -2. His seasons were 4, 2 and -8, so his defense became worse with each season.

so now you include finnish prospects as swedes also?

 

[cheerupmurray]

Man, the swedish posters that have been hyping Antti Pihlströms fantastic defensive skills got to feel stupid now

 

[Mc5RingsAndABeer]

I think it is more the likelihood of players reaching their potential that is a bit overrated. Sure, it's possible Tedenby, Josefsson, Johansson, Silfverberg, Klingberg, Lander, Pettersson and so on all will end up on scoring lines like some of the fans of the teams that owns their rights believe. Most likely quite a few of the players of that caliber won't.

Same with penciling in many of the good defenders as top pairing guys.

It's a problem with American and Canadian players too. I guess since people automatically assume all Swedish players are good two-way players it's a bit exaggerated with them.

Great post. I also think it's a bit worse on HF than it is elsewhere.

 

[Ruslan Zainullin]

Sweden does a great job teaching their kids skills, the Swedish culture is one based on equality and as such swedes tend to be good team players, and Hockey is a popular sport so many of the top Swedish athletes wind up playing hockey rather than something else. are Swedish prospects overrated as a group? considering how many play in the NHL i would say absolutely not, although like any prospect a few individuals do wind up being overrated (i thought hedman, while a good player, was a little overrated in his draft year).

 

[His Beardliness*]

Yes and no. Some are, some aren't. I have seen Jonas Andersson and Antti Pihlstrom play in Milwaukee. Both had great offensive skills but their defense was terrible.

Antti scored 57 points for Milwaukee in 93 games, but was only +4. Jonas scored 54 points in 172 games, but was -2. His seasons were 4, 2 and -8, so his defense became worse with each season.

Both players were speedy skaters, so that wasn't the problem.

+/- arguments are Pejorative Slured and Antti Pihlström is finnish. Also, I don't think Jonas Andersson has ever been hyped as a prospect, I'm not even sure who the guy is.

 

[Password]

Sweden's got a whole lot of great prospects, but yes they are a little bit overrated imo. They've produced so many good prospects that people have started to overrate them a bit.

 

[Lainlight]

No they are not. If any countries prospects are overrated, its Canadas

 

[Tiranis]

I'm not sure they're overrated, but I've noticed (at least on the Canucks board) that people look at the stats from SEL and assume that will automatically translate in some meaningful way. Everyone has learnt not to do that with junior hockey and to some extent the AHL, since the player might be too slow for the NHL, too small, not strong enough, or a million other things that would stop him from producing in the NHL.

 

[cheerupmurray]

I'm not sure they're overrated, but I've noticed (at least on the Canucks board) that people look at the stats from SEL and assume that will automatically translate in some meaningful way. Everyone has learnt not to do that with junior hockey and to some extent the AHL, since the player might be too slow for the NHL, too small, not strong enough, or a million other things that would stop him from producing in the NHL.

Success in SEL absolutely doesn't mean that the player will be successful in NHL/AHL. Theres loads of examples of that. However theres also quite a few examples of the opposite.

It's hard to tell how a player will adapt, I mean look at Erik Karlsson the year before he crossed over to NA he had 10 points in SEL, the following season 26 points in NHL.
On the other hand Rickard Wallin was a leader and one of the best players in SEL and scored 46 points in 2008/2009, the year after that he was a joke in Toronto and scored 9 points.

Just like AHL-stats and CHL-stats you got to take SEL-stats with a grain of salt and look at the player and if he got the qualities to make the league.

However it's easy to call a player coming over from SEL to NA and not impressing at the training camp a bust. In reality it might take the player a while to get used to the different rinksize and adapt to the NA game. Take Rundblad as an example, his game is made for the big ice and it will take him a while to learn how to use his skills when there are less time, less space. It easy to say, well this kid was underwhelming when in reality his game has a good chance at improving fast when he is getting used to the NA-game.
Right now it doesn't look like Rundblad will make Ottawa from the start but you can clearly see how his game has improved with each preseason game.

This is also very obvious when it comes to goalies, it takes time to adapt.