Adam Edstrom was drafted as a center out of Sweden, even if the hulking 6-foot-7 forward has exclusively manned the wing since joining the Rangers’ organization.
That all changed Saturday night in Minnesota, when the 25-year-old Edstrom was moved back to the middle for the first time in the NHL, centering the fourth line in a 4-2 win over the Wild.
Rangers coach Mike Sullivan believed it was Edstrom’s first time playing that position since his under-20 junior season in Sweden.
“We wanted to see what it might look like if Eddy had the capability of playing in the middle,” Sullivan said after the last-place Rangers posted a season-high fourth straight win. “Obviously, if you get a guy that’s 6-7 that has the capacity to play the position, especially in a fourth-line role, he can certainly be hard to play against with his size, his mobility, his reach. He can lean on people. In practice [Friday], they were helping him. J.T. [Miller] and [Vincent Trocheck] and Mika [Zibanejad] were helping him on the faceoff circle. I think we’ll continue to explore it with him.”
Edstrom, who previously had taken only seven draws in his NHL career, won one of his four faceoffs against the Wild over 7:33 of ice-time.
Sullivan admitted the coaching staff “tried to protect” Edstrom, by not sending his line out for any defensive-zone draws.
“He hasn’t played a lot of it most recently … but I thought [Edstrom] did a good job,” Sullivan said. “As far as his ability to play down low in the D-zone, sometimes our wings and the nature of how we play within our concept, they end up down there sometimes anyways, so he has some familiarity with that position.
“But obviously his size, his reach, his strength, down in the battle areas can be effective. He’s hard to play against, just by nature of how big he is. And he can really skate. So we thought for all those reasons that we’d explore it.”
Another consideration for making the move, Sullivan said, was because he didn’t want to take rookie winger Jaroslav Chmelar out of the lineup.
Thus, with Miller returning after a five-game injury absence, Edstrom was shifted inside and center Juuso Parssinen was scratched.
And Chmelar scored his second goal of the season.
“We liked how Jaro was playing. We wanted to keep Jaro in the lineup,” Sullivan said. “With some of the options that we had — and we talked about all the possibilities — we thought that we would explore this one.”
It’s certainly hard to argue with the recent results, with a 6-1-2 record since returning from the Olympic break entering Monday’s home game against traded leading scorer Artemi Panarin and the Kings.
Sullivan was also encouraged by how the Rangers angrily came to the defense of goalie Igor Shesterkin when Minnesota’s Joel Eriksson Ek took a swipe at him in the crease during Saturday’s game.
“For sure, I think these guys are playing hard for one another. I think they’re having some fun. They feel good about what’s going on,” Sullivan said. “Obviously, when you win some game, that helps. We’ve got some guys that are playing pretty well. They’re scoring some goals, so they’re getting rewarded for their efforts.
“And I’m happy for them, because it’s obviously been an up-and-down year. They’ve been through a lot. There’s a good feeling going through the team right now.”
