Rögle is struggling and bounces are not going the team’s way. That means it’s tough to evaluate Adam Engström’s season unless you are watching the SHL. With the time difference that might be difficult for North American fans. With this in mind, we take a deeper look at Engström’s season so far.
At the time of writing, Rögle is 12th in the 14-team table, not where everyone expected them to be at this time of the year. Some problems stem from the fact that the team has lost William Wallinder and Tom Willander (who didn’t play for the team last year in order to keep his NCAA illegality) but a big part is really the fact that they have too many offensive-minded defencemen: Thomas Grégoire, Michael Kapla, Valtteri Viljanen, and of course Adam Engström. There have also been injuries on the back end so all of these defenders have had to play together, which has created problems with turnovers and mistakes in their own zone.
Looking at the analytics available from the SHL website, we can see some explanation.
| Rögle | Ranking in SHL | Engström | Engström Rel. | |
| Corsi | 51.71 | 6th | 54.64 | 2.93 |
| Corsi-Close | 48.62 | 9th | 50.00 | 1.38 |
| PDO | 95.95 | 14th | 92.81 | -3.14 |
Comparing Engström to the team, he has stronger numbers except for the PDO which to some extent explains his ‘low’ numbers for the season, but it also gives an idea of why Rögle is struggling: they can’t put pucks in the net.
When Eyes On The Prize spoke with Engström after Wednesday’s practice (an interview conducted in Swedish), he was keen to point out that “I have become stronger defensively, and since the season hasn’t gone the way we expected I have had to play more defensive as well. Defence is the first step, and then the offence will come secondary. I have mainly worked on my positioning, the work along the boards and in front of the net, and I think there are clear results in these areas.”
Engström has a clear goal for the season: “to become stronger defensively,” as he puts it himself. The plus/minus will hopefully adjust over the season, but it’s “not something I’m bothered about at the moment.”
Offensively Engström concedes that he “has had many opportunities, but I need to be sharper in the execution.” He laughs when asked if it has started to bother him, to have gotten into his mind. “I know I have gotten to the right situations so I know they will start to go in at one point or another. I am not worried at all.”
Rögle’s defensive coach, Max Bohlin, also gave his thoughts on Engström’s development, pointing out the same facts as Engström; “I see some improvements in his awareness, for sure. I think that he has parts in the games where he is executing on a really, really high level; in terms of the one-on-one situations along the boards, taking ice, gapping up for example. He’s stronger, he’s faster, he’s better — way better — than last year on the defensive part of the game. The thing that we need to work on is being consistent in those actions because he’s lacking consistency [at the moment].
“With the puck he is one of the biggest drivers [of the puck] in the whole SHL, looking at some interesting stats; creating scoring chances etc. We are not worried about his game with the puck. We can all see that he is on a really high level. It’s all about being consistent without the puck.”
As mentioned higher up in the article a defence of Thomas Grégoire, Michael Kapla, Valtteri Viljanen, and Adam Engström along with an addition of Lucas Ekeståhl-Jonsson (from Kloten) is not the best collection for the defensive assignments, Bohlin doesn’t want to get drawn into a conversation about how Engström has performed against the other defencemen and takes the offered quote. “I have an offensive defence,” he says with a laugh.
The full Max Bohlin interview is included in the Prospect Minded episode below:
