In his first press availability of the season, Simon Edvinsson started out with a simple question to answer: what is it like to go into training camp assured of a roster spot? Edvinsson paused for a moment, then politely contradicted the initial assertion. “I don’t think like that, actually,” he said. “It’s a training camp where we come from a season where we didn’t reach playoffs by one point, and I think my main focus has been just to be as good as possible and as ready as possible for the start of the season. Nothing has changed with my focus from there.” Edvinsson might be just 21 years old with 25 NHL games under his belt, but his words suggest an approach to camp and a clarity of purpose beyond his years.
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“A lot happened,” Edvinsson said of the final two months of the season. “I know how hard it is to grab a playoff spot,” he added. “I know what is needed from the whole team and me personally to grab that extra point [in the standings]…That’s the biggest takeaway.”
As far as individual lessons from the Red Wings painfully close playoff push, Edvinsson explained, “Don’t try to be the hero of the game,” Edvinsson said of what he took from last season. “Opportunities will come to you. As a defenseman, I have to play strong defense and if the opportunity to go forward and [be] offensive, I will take it. That was the main thing I took [from last season].”
It was that propensity for heroism that Detroit coach Derek Lalonde saw Edvinsson overcome on his way to earning supreme trust, and Lalonde expects that to pick straight up where it left off a year ago. “I foresee him being in our top four to start the season,” Lalonde said of Edvinsson. “His overall play from Grand Rapids last year to what he gave us down the stretch, where he slotted with our push at the end of the year, we foresee him in a similar role and kind of let it play out from there.” “We might be a little fluid with our top four…If he earns more minutes, he’ll get more minutes,” he adds. If his words are any indicator, Edvinsson himself is more focused on the collective than his own individual progress. He makes plain that he felt a profound sting at the end of last season, and he wants to approach the fresh year with a mindset aimed at rectifying that.
Per the lanky young Swede, missing the playoffs “was painful, but there is motivation when you go on the ice and you think about that extra point there [in the standings]. A lot of guys did that. I train with [Lucas Raymond] and he had the same feeling about that. It stunk but it was a good thing to have that in the back of your head when you are doing those extra workout things.” “This one, just the intensity of the practices,” he adds, when asked what stands out about this training camp as opposed to his previous two. “You can see it. It hurt for a lot of people last year to not reach the playoffs. That’s the difference, the intensity we bring out to this training camp.
In response to a question about whether he sets statistical goals for himself heading into the new season, Edvinsson makes even clearer where his focus lies, if there could be any doubt, again betraying a maturity beyond his years.
“Of course, I want to stay healthy,” Edvinsson says. “I try to be as professional on the ice as off the ice, not get injured and try to play as many games as possible. With the points, of course I want to have a good season, but nothing that feels this is a[n individual] goal that I have. Reaching playoffs that would be it, and that’s a pretty good goal to have I think.”
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