Why Canadiens prospect Adam Engstrom has seen his game take off
HALIFAX, NS — A little more than a year ago, when Rogle BK general manager Chris Abbott started asking around with scouts to get their thoughts on Sweden’s most underrated young player, a name from Djurgardens IF, a team loaded with talent for the 2022 NHL Draft, kept coming up.
It wasn’t Jonathan Lekkeriamkis, the future first round pick Vancouver Canucks. It wasn’t Noah Ostlund’s, the prospective first rounder Buffalo Sabres. It wasn’t Liam Ohgren’s, the prospective first rounder Minnesota Wild. It wasn’t Calle Odelius, the future second rounder New York Islanderseither.
It was their older teammate, defenseman Adam Engström, the group’s birthday in late 2003. At the time, those whispers that Engström was one of the better 2003-born defensemen in the country hadn’t extended to his draft status. When NHL Central Scouting released its players to the watch list for the 2022 class, he wasn’t among the nearly 375 players on it. They hadn’t made the national team either. Until that point, Engström had never represented Sweden internationally. But Abbott and his staff, always keen to potentially bring in 17-, 18- and 19-year-old players who might take a big step in their development, decided to put him on their radar and follow him closely.
As the season progressed, though he never made headlines for his highly touted teammates, whispers about Engström turned into talk and then into some buzz. When scouts showed up to watch Lekkerimaki, Ostlund, Ohgren and Odelius, they were often impressed with him. At midseason, he made his first appearance on NHL Central Scouting’s roster, ranked No. 81 on its list of European skaters. By the end of the season, he had made it all the way to No. 38 on NHL Central Scouting’s final rankings of European skaters.
Eventually, the Montreal Canadiens selected him with the 92nd pick in the third round of the draft. Knowing that Djurgården’s professional team would be relegated from the SHL to the second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan, and that because of that they would be in a lesser position the following year to play against all five of their promising young players as they tried to earn promotion back to the top flight, reached Abbott out to Engström’s camp.
He wasn’t promised anything, and Abbott wasn’t ready to give him a rookie contract in the SHL, but Rogle wanted to take him on a junior contract and work with him, as they had in the past with other young defensemen, including Detroitpp Moritz Seider and William Wallinder.
Eventually, with the support of the Canadiens, Engström decided to make the move.
His play since then has put him on everyone’s radar.
Today, just one year after he made his first appearance near the bottom of NHL Central Scouting’s midseason rankings, he’s now signed that rookie SHL contract and is playing for Team Sweden for the first time — on his first pair of world juniors no less.
A couple of weeks ago, before going to the tournament, he played 19:02, 16:11, 20:30, 19:41 and 17:33 in his last five games for Rogle.
In his first game of the world juniors and – according to him – his first game on the smaller North American ice, he picked up two assists, registered two shots on goal and finished plus-4 in an 11-0 win against Austria. In his second game, he scored the lone goal in Sweden’s tight 1-0 win over Germany, going to the line and placing a shot in front of the net for his third point in four periods, and was out late for a trio of shifts in the final five the minutes.
Just as those whispers predicted, he has taken off.
When Senators prospect Oskar Pettersson is asked about his Rogle and Tre Kronor teammate, he talks about the 6-foot-2, 190-pound left-shooting defenseman almost like a forward.
“(Engström) plays along very of trust. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another D play with that confidence,” Pettersson said. “His hockey IQ is very, very good. He sees the plays out there. He makes very good plays both down low and from the blue line. He likes to dribble and make some nice moves, but he can also make great passes and really shoot it.
That – the offensive side of the game – is where his untapped potential was. Although he scored 10 goals and 35 points in a combined 51 regular season and playoff games with Djurgarden’s junior team last year, three more than Odelius’ 32 in 49, it was Odelius who got the bulk of the power-play time and SHL opportunity ( Odelius played seven SHL games against Engström’s one last year), which hid some of Engström’s own talents. The same is true in Halifax with the national team, where its 2023 draft-eligible defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka handles the power play while Engström has been tasked with a five-on-five and penalty-killing role.
But when the puck dropped this season and Engström began the year with Rogle’s junior level, he had just spent the entire summer working on his game on the blue line, practicing posting and working on new ways to “create some time” for himself.
The impact was immediate, with Engström going for a goal and four points on five shots in his debut with Rogle’s junior team. After scoring three goals and nine points from the back at J20 level through September, Abbott signed him to a professional contract on short notice. Before the first month of the season was over, he had already scored his first SHL goal (in just his fourth game at the new level) as well.
From there, he hasn’t looked back, and has played mainly at SHL level since the beginning of October. Heading into the world juniors, he had played 32 games for the professional club in the SHL and Champions Hockey League, with four goals and seven points.
The summer of work and the move to Rogle both paid off and impressed Abbott.
“He’s a very mobile, intelligent, offensive-minded guy who does a lot of very creative things on the blue line, sees the ice really well from his own end and through the neutral zone, and can also avoid forecheckers with his skating, IQ, and patience in deception to make guys misread him. He’s also a scorer. He has a good heads-up mentality from the blue line and I like to see that. He can certainly run a power play. I can see him doing that in the future for us even more,” Abbott said. “He’s a dynamic player and he continues to step up his game by adding different attributes throughout the season here, whether it’s being more risky on the blue of the offensive zone line there if he has opportunities to beat guys he can, and yet at. at the same time don’t give up a lot defensively because that’s a big area in our league is making sure you’re net positive overall. He’s done a really good job of being that for us.”
The underlying numbers reflect Abbott’s belief that he has been a net positive in the SHL as an 18- and 19-year-old (Engstrom turned 19 in November). With Engström on the ice in five-on-five, Rogle has outscored the opposition 248-222 (53 CF%).
He has made a similar impression off the ice as well.
“He’s been great. He just wanted an opportunity. We tend to underpromise and then overdeliver as far as possible. He showed quickly that he should have his opportunity with our pro team and when he’s gotten it, he’s taken it,” Abbott said .” It just speaks to his confidence and his humility at the same time. He’s just a really fun guy, really fun teammate. He is mature, professional, listens really well and is very coachable. I have nothing bad to say about him and I don’t mind calling it like it is.”
The strong impression has continued with Team Sweden, where Rogle’s assistant general manager Hampus Sjostrom is also coach for this year’s U20 national team.
He has a big role to play on a Swedish team that lacks a clear No. 1 defenseman after Red Wings first baseman Simon Edvinsson was not loaned to the team.
So far, Magnus Havelid, the team’s head coach, has liked what he has seen, praising Engström, who started the tournament alongside vice-captain Victor Sjoholm, for his sharpness and speed in the back.
– Everyone’s level needs to step up a little extra (without Edvinsson). We need everyone on defense. (Engström) can jump across the ice and not just skate with the puck. He is mobile — he can go both offensively and defensively. So I can use him in many situations, says Havelid. “I think he has developed very well in Rogle. For him, when you know what’s right and wrong, I think it’s good. Before this tournament, he was playing really, really well in the SHL.
Cam Abbott, Chris’s twin brother and the head coach of Rogle BK, laughs from his home in Sweden on a call on Tuesday night when asked about Engström’s rise.
His steep trajectory isn’t just about his play offensively, he says. His talent is clear to see when he has the puck at the offensive zone blue line, or when he drives up the ice, but the progress elsewhere in his game deserves just as much credit for his ascension.
“Adam is a kid with incredible skill but also an ability to take in information and make adjustments to his game. He’s gone very quickly from being a junior defenseman with ability on the offensive end to a guy who has really raised the bar defensively with us. He’s a really fun kid to work with who’s earned it, works really hard and is very coachable,” Cam said.
“I don’t think he’s been pushed at junior level to really be proud because he’s had to with us, in his defensive responsibilities, for the first half of the season with us. He’s pushing himself all the time to defend more effectively and for a kid with his knack for balancing the offensive risk/reward, that’s something I think he keeps doing better and better.”
That growth in his own zone, which he says has also been aided by regular communication with the Canadiens throughout the season, has allowed him to take on a more defensive role with Team Sweden with confidence.
“I feel comfortable. I feel good. I accept the role that I get here. I can play wherever they want me to go,” he said.
To find a suitable comparison for how quickly he has progressed, Chris used another rising star from Rogle.
“We saw Wallinder in the first round not being taken by the national team and then we won the Swedish rookie of the year over (Simon) Edvinsson as well,” Chris said.
Added Cam: “He’s just getting started.”
(Top image: Courtesy Rogle BK)