Ex-Red Wings have a rough past week
Photo credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
Ex-Detroit Red Wings players, including Jakub Vrana, have had a rough past week in the SHL ahead of the holidays
If you're a former Detroit Red Wings player playing in the SHL, there's a chance you suffered a tough week.
Former Red Wings forward Jakub Vrana hit the roof, and goaltender Magnus Hellberg would temporarily experience a loss of sentience. Christian Djoos experienced a significant loss for the season, and Kasper Kantasanlo lost a treasured job.
Vrana, who has been playing for Linkoping, was tied 3-3 with Skelleftea. He'd exit the bench and enter the play, and as Skelleftea carried the puck into the Linkoping blueline, Vrana would do the unthinkable, throwing his stick onto the path of the puck when it was passed from one player to another.
For Vrana, this was a bad look; it gave Skelleftea a penalty shot, which they would capitalize on, scoring a point.
«In hockey, you make decisions in a split second sometimes,» Vrana explained to Swedish website Aftonbladet. «It wasn't the best decision of my career.»
Fortunately for Vrana, he had teammates who rallied together to overcome the deficit and win the game 5-4 in a shootout.
Former Detroit Red Wings players suffer a rough week in the SHL
Goaltender Magnus Hellberg is another former Red Wings player who has found a home with Djurgarden in the SHL. Guarding the crease against HV71, whose forward Nikola Pasic rushed the crease and crashed into Hellberg.
Needless to say, Hellberg focused on the puck and suffered the aftereffects:
«It's clear that it's not fun to get hit like that,» Hellberg told Aftonbladet. «He came at high speed, and as a goalie, you focus on stopping the puck.»
Hellberg would lie predisposed on the ice for several minutes
«It went black a little, but he didn't hit my head, but my shoulder and neck,» Hellberg said.
What was a match penalty, later became goaltender interference for Pasic.
Former Red Wings defenseman Christian Djoos has been playing for Brynas this season. That is, until he was shut down by the team for the season after being out of action since November due to a hip injury.
After undergoing surgery, it was determined that he wouldn't be playing hockey again until the 2026-27 season.
«In order to be able to perform to his best ability on the ice, this hip surgery was necessary,» Brynas sports director Johan Alcén said in a release on the club's website.
Djoos last played for the Red Wings in 2020-21, a mere 30 years after his father Par Djoos played on the blueline for the team during the 1990-91 season. Ironically, Djoos had a longer stint in Detroit, playing 36 games in Detroit to his father's 26 games as a blueliner.
Lula has decided to drop a former Red Wings defenseman, Kasper Kotkansalo. Selected 71st overall in 2017, a player whom the team thought highly of at one point, has been released from his contract mid-season.
This is just after Lula scooped him up as a free agent during the offseason.
He has suffered the same fate as he did in the NHL. Instead of extending Kotkansalo, they released him after 21 games, zero points, and a minus -1.
| POLL | ||
DECEMBRE 26 | 53 ANSWERS Ex-Red Wings have a rough past week Are you surprised that all ex-Detroit Red Wings players had a week so tough, including forward Jakub Vrana in the SHL? | ||
| Yes | 18 | 34 % |
| No` | 35 | 66 % |
| List of polls | ||