Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan believes in the potential of Elmer Soderblom, who has been a healthy scratch in three of Detroit's opening six games of their centennial campaign.
The Detroit Red Wings continue to have high expectations for 6-foot-8 forward Elmer Soderblom, who quite literally embodies the definition of the word “big.”
Soderblom has been on Detroit's NHL roster since being called up from the American Hockey League's Grand Rapids Griffins last season, and he made the final cut out of Training Camp and the pre-season for the second time in his career earlier this month.
He's played in just three of Detroit's six games so far in the young season, and has yet to register a point.
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Head coach Todd McLellan chalked Soderblom's designation as a healthy scratch during Sunday's 4-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers as simply being a roster decision rather than a message being sent.
"For anybody on our roster, when we've won more than we've lost, sometimes roster decisions are made just to get some other people up and running, too," McLellan explained following Tuesday's practice. "It's not that the players who come out have been disasters or their game has fallen off, or they need a wakeup call."
"Sometimes, we just try and keep players alive because we know we're going to need them," McLellan continued. "In Elmer's case, we had him out and we put him back in. I thought he played better than he did in the games prior. He did some of the things we asked of him, but we looked at the lineup that Edmonton had and talked about size and pace, and maybe he drew the short end of the straw when it came to it."
Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman, who selected Soderblom in the sixth round (159th overall) of the 2019 NHL Draft, saw fit to extend his time in the organization during the offseason with a two-year contract extension.
Throughout his career, Soderblom has shown glimpses of promise and especially showed signs of growth during portions of Training Camp when he skated alongside Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond on the team's top forward line.
His performance in the annual Red & White Game in Grand Rapids was particularly noteworthy, as he scored twice for Team White.
McLellan hinted at wanting to see more consistent performances from Soderblom, whom he believes has all of the tools necessary to make an effective NHL Player.
"Elmer is fine and he's working on his game, he's a big man who can control things with his size, and I think he's got a nice set of hands and can shoot the puck," McLellan said. "All of those tools are very useable tools for him, and we want to see it show up game after game."
McLellan then cautioned against reading too much into Soderblom's absence from the lineup.
Following his call-up from the Griffins last season, Soderblom ultimately appeared in 26 games, scoring four goals with seven assists, giving him a total of nine goals and 10 assists in his NHL career thus far.
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