Does Christoffer Ehn have a future with the Detroit Red Wings?
By Bob Heyrman
He was the biggest opening night roster surprise with the Detroit Red Wings, but does he have a future with the team or will he be fazed and overlooked?
When the Detroit Red Wings started the regular season, the back-end was extremely depleted, so the team fielded a group of young, inexperienced defensemen. You could say players like Libor Sulak, Joe Hicketts, Filip Hronek and Dennis Cholowski were all unexpected players that started the season on the roster but with all the injuries that had occurred early on it was sort of expected.
Christoffer Ehn, on the other hand, was not an expected roster addition for the Wings. He was supposed to be in Grand Rapids helping the Griffins, yet he found his way to Detroit with a strong training camp and preseason.
He sort of blends in on the fourth line in Detroit with a bunch of veteran checking, defensive-minded forwards. The Detroit Red Wings have a plethora of bottom-six type forwards who are extremely limited offensively, and Ehn just adds to the list. He’s a good penalty killing forward, he can play center, but he’s primarily played as a winger this season with Jacob de La Rose as his center.
More from Octopus Thrower
- Detroit Red Wings forward Carter Mazur injured in Prospect Tournament
- Detroit Red Wings: What does Klim Kostin’s role look like in 2023-24?
- Detroit Red Wings: 3 players who will make biggest impact in first year
- The Detroit Red Wings need Andrew Copp to start fast in 2023-24
- Detroit Red Wings had a busy off-season; but was it enough?
He’s an above average skater, but he’s struggled to produce offense throughout his entire professional career dating back before he made it to North America to start this season. He played three seasons with the Frolunda HC hockey team a member of the Swedish Hockey League.
He had some notable teammates, Joel Lundqvist who is a forward and the brother to Henrik. Rasmus Dahlin the first overall pick in last summer’s NHL Entry Level Draft along with Adam Almquist and Jan Mursak a pair of former Detroit Red Wings.
Ehn didn’t exactly light the lamp recording 11 goals, 21 assists totaling 32 points and was a plus one over the course of three seasons totaling 139 games. He was also unable to find the magic touch throughout his playoff career recording 3 points in 36 playoff appearances.
The Detroit Red Wings selected Christoffer Ehn in the fourth round, 106th overall in the 2014 NHL Entry Level Draft. This season with the Wings he’s managed 3 goals, 6 helpers accomplishing 9 points during 54 games. He’s a minus -2, and his CF% is flat out terrible sitting at 42.7%.
The Detroit Red Wings have veteran players like Darren Helm, Justin Abdelkader, Luke Glendening, Jacob de La Rose, Frans Nielsen plus more skilled players such as Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi who all kill penalties. So why keep another player to skate on the fourth line while having a forward group that is log jammed?
Next. How does Jack Hughes change the landscape?. dark
As I see it Ehn in all likelihood will be the odd man out, the Detroit Red Wings are expected to have Filip Zadina, Evgeny Svechnikov, Taro Hirose, Joseph Veleno and whoever the team drafts in the first round in the upcoming draft looking to make the opening night roster. I think Ehn is better suited for Grand Rapids and remain waiting in the wings (pun intended) in case injuries happened to occur.