Jim Matheson’s Hockey World
Roadblock may keep him in Sweden until end of season
It’s not every National Hockey League general manager who can say he has traded for two Forsbergs. “The other Forsberg’s going to be in the Hall of Fame, but we got him a little old. We got this one at the right age,” said Nashville Predators GM David Poile, who went all in to acquire Peter Forsberg at age 33 for a playoff run (17 games, 15 points) in 2007 only to have Swedish forward’s health fail him.
Poile went in the opposite direction last Wednesday in a deal that was shocking not so much for giving up Martin Erat, their second-leading alltime point-producer, but for getting one of the game’s top prospects, 18-year-old winger Filip Forsberg, from the Washington Capitals.
“I’d do that trade with Peter again. It was probably the most exciting time with our franchise. We had Forsberg and Paul Kariya. Peter had bad luck with his foot, and one of the guys who also got hurt was Marty Erat going into those playoffs,” said Poile.
Filip Forsberg, who is not related to Peter, is six-footthree and 190 pounds, playing for Leksands in Sweden, the league below the Elitserien. He did well enough that the team was promoted to the Elite League next season. He was also captain of the Swedish 2012 world junior championship squad and, by all accounts, he’s top-nine NHL material.
“We had him as a top five on our draft list. In his draft year (2012), there was a big run of defenceman (in the first round). Eight out of nine went. I think on everybody’s list, Forsberg would have been rated higher than where he went at 11,” said Poile. “What do I like about him? Everything. …”
Maybe Forsberg will turn out to be as good as Mika Zibanejad and Jacob Silfverberg in Ottawa. They’ve helped save the Senators’ season. “Yeah, those are good comparisons. If he’s anything like those two guys, he’d be terrific,” said Poile.
“He’ll play in the NHL for sure,” said Oilers chief scout Stu MacGregor.
Craig Button, the former Calgary GM now working for TSN and a draft guru, has seen Forsberg a lot. “He’s big, strong, skilled. He’s a difference-maker. …”
Nashville was hoping to get Forsberg over to North America a few days after the trade deadline, but there’s a roadblock now. “He was just named to the Swedish world championship team on a tryout basis for games in Latvia Sunday and Monday,” said Poile. “The worlds, or half of them, are in Sweden this year. The worlds are always a man’s tournament and you would think they’d be waiting for NHL players.”
The Predators would like Forsberg to at least practise with their club before the season ends. This might be the year the Predators miss the playoffs after all those Houdini acts by Poile and coach Barry Trotz to wheel and deal and squeeze every last ounce out of the team with so little offensive juice over the years.
Erat, who was second to David Legwand in career scoring with the Predators, surprised Poile when he told him privately that he didn’t want to be in Nashville any longer.
“It’s clearly a step back for us when you trade somebody off our first line, a guy who has been a really good player. It’s not a good situation when somebody doesn’t want to be with your team,” said Poile. “Did I think it was coming? No. Did I want it? No? It’s not helping us with a hole in our lineup this year, but we think we’ve got a good player going forward.
“Erat provided me with a list of (10) teams he’d go to and I called all of them, well, not all of them because some of them made no sense in terms of a fit for what we wanted to do. My first choice was to get young players rather than draft picks. This was the best player.”
“He’s big, strong, skilled. He’s a differencemaker.” Craig Button
Capitals GM George McPhee’s track record has always been to look down the road, not wanting to dispose of his highend draft picks. On the other hand, the Caps had two firstrounders last June (Forsberg and Ontario Hockey League forward Tom Wilson, who came close to making Canada’s world junior squad for the championship in Ufa, Russia, last Christmas), so maybe McPhee felt he could give up one of them.
McPhee certainly wasn’t going to surrender stud Russian forward Evgeni Kuznetsov, who will be over after the 2014 Sochi Olympics, for anything. “All of us want to keep our young players, but Washington is playing the best they have all year, Ovechkin’s hot, Mike Green’s healthy and now you add Erat … I’m a great believer in parity in today’s NHL and anything can happen in the playoffs and they could be in the third position (as the Southeast Division champions), which is home-ice advantage,” said Poile.
Unfortunately, Erat was injured Saturday when he was crushed into boards by Florida Panthers’ Erik Gudbranson and appeared to hurt his left leg. The Capitals have described it as a “lower body” injury.
As for the Predators, Poile has been trying to turn his team over. It’s a change on the fly. The next move is waiting for the Philadelphia Flyers’ call on Shea Weber this summer to see if they can get the defenceman after Nashville matched his offer sheet last August.
Pitkanen latest icing injury victim
Ryan Smyth felt for Carolina Hurricanes defenceman Joni Pitkanen when he fractured his heel, crashing into the boards on a dash to get an icing call against Washington’s Troy Brouwer. Smyth felt Brouwer got his stick into the play, but not into Pitkanen’s feet. He appeared to reach in, trying to lift Pitkanen’s stick and got his hand. Whatever, Brouwer was behind Pitkanen the whole way up the ice after the Karl Alzner dump out.