Prospect Info Under the Radar: 2012 NHL Draft prospects coming out of J18 Elit?

[Curley]

Last year, a few guys were taken out of the J18 Elit league that did not have a lot of J20 SuperElit or above experience:

Emil Molin
Simon Karlsson
Michael Schumacher

These guys were not rated by central scouting likely because they did not play much at J20 level and were not on the world u18 type championship teams.


Almost a year later, it appears these may be pretty astute picks on the part of the NHL teams. All three players seem to be improving and producing. I'm wondering if there are going to be more picks out of the J18 Elit juniors in 2012.

Based upon stats, the 2012 guys who seem to jump out are:

Oscar Sundqvist
Gustaf Berling

They both seem to be productive players with good size.

For people who have seen them play, are these guys legitimate prospects? Also, who are other guys that you would watch for?

[cheerupmurray]

In general there is some teams that takes it slow with their players and let them progress slowly trough their junior teams. They want their players to get welleducated and not miss out on any steps in their development. I bet you will find most of the gems in theese clubs.

Djurgården has traditionally been one of them, good prospects like Wennberg and Kalin didn't get prominent roles on the j-20team, and they got a couple of great 95´s that have to wait for their turns (Liljendahl for example) to get some playtime in the j-20 team.

Brynäs and Skellefteå is two other teams where you probably can find gems that havn't been given much time in j-20 since theese teams are deep. Frölunda and Linköping is pretty deep too.

Rögle has loads of good 94´s and all of them haven't been given prime minutes in Superelit, Gustav Berling for example is quite good from what I have seen, Oskar Norlöv is also a tad interesting.

One player that is really hidden away is Viktor Liljegren in Djurgården j-18, that have fantastic skating for his big size (6'03''), so he has the tools to be a NHL-grinder with the right devlopment. On the same team is Freric Anderberg that had his development a bit ruined by injuries (but has been a national team player in u-16, u-17 and u-18) and Henrik Nyberg that has great attitude and is a good energy player(also played a lot for the NT).

[Curley]

Cheerupmurray,

Thanks for your reply. Your insights are really helpful. It seems quite right that the under the radar prospects are coming from those clubs.

My question appears like it was a bit too out of the mainstream to attract many replies. But, it will be interesting, because I suspect in five years, we'll look back and find someone breaking out at the NHL level in this category of under the radar j18 level players.

Sweden just seems to do such a great job at producing NHL level talents.

[KRM]

Although not from J18 but under the radar guys for Frölunda could be Folin, Rosén, and a real wild card in Philip Martinsson. Folin I'm really high on, he reads the play so well and makes defence look easy. He's not an offensive minded defenceman but got a decent tool kit, and during the season it looked like scouts had told him to start producing because it looked like he was trying to force offensive production. Which is a shame because he was playing so much better when he played his own game.

Except for Collberg and Karlsson I think Rydahl and Israelsson have a good shot at getting drafted, maybe Svedberg and Backman as overagers.