Red Wings defenseman Simon Edvinsson found himself toe to toe, ready to go with Ottawa forward Tim Stutzle. The next thing you know, Senators captain Brady Tkachuk was entering the chat.
“He came from nowhere, wanted to provoke and I’m very competitive,” Edvinsson explained to Swedish website Afronbladet. “I probably saw black there and then it probably wouldn’t have mattered who was standing there. So my first (NHL) fight was against Tkachuk.”
After giving a good accounting of himself in the scrap, Edvinsson remembered the mixed reception he got upon returning to the Detroit bench.
His teammates were in a celebratory mood.
“I created energy in the bench and that’s what you do with a fight,” Edvinsson said.
Red Wings coach Todd McLellan wasn’t as enamored with Edvinsson’s choice of dance partners. It didn’t excite him to see his second-best defenseman tangling with one of the NHL’s toughest customers.
“It was probably the coach who wasn’t so happy with me afterwards,” Edvinsson said. “The coach first joked and said he wanted me on the ice, but then he also said it was good that I stood up for myself and the team.”
Edvinsson Excited By Progress With Red Wings
Completing his first full NHL season, Edvinsson is now back home. He’ll be playing for Sweden in the IIHF World Championship. And he’s absolutely bubbling over with confidence following his strong Red Wings campaign.
“I feel like this is the first year I feel really comfortable with my weight,” the 6-foot-6, 209-pound Edvinsson said. “Mentally it felt a lot better, too. I knew I could play at this level and it was just a matter of finding the mental part of it.”
Edvinsson finished with 7-24-31 totals from 78 games, along with a team-best plus-12 rating.
“I got to play a lot of minutes right from the start and that helped, of course,” he said. Edvinsson averaged 21:07 of ice time per game. He was often getting as much as 24 minutes in some games toward the end of the season.
Edvinsson also gives much of the credit for his success to two of the best Red Wings defensemen of this generation, Nicklas Lidstrom and Niklas Kronwall. Both members of the Detroit front office, they’ve worked with him on the nuances of his game.
“There has been a lot of training with Kronwall,” Edvinsson said. “Not so much off the ice, but more on the ice.
“He helps me how to think in different situations and he has been a big help there.”
It was a heated moment in the strugggle, a not uncommon occurrence when the Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators square off on the ice.
More details soon…
