What Does a Successful Rookie Season Look Like for Simon Edvinsson?
Simon Edvinsson’s play during a 14-game call-up last season raised expectations for his rookie season. Outside of the extremes, here’s what a successful 2024-25 could look like.
After seeing 2021 first round pick Simon Edvinsson thrive in a 14-game call-up with the Detroit Red Wings last season, his expectations have skyrocketed. Top pairing minutes, maybe even a power play — Edvinsson’s stock is rising before he has even stepped foot into Red Wings training camp. His rookie season is poised to be a big one, and people on the inside and outside of the organization expect big things.
In light of these complementary views of his potential, it’s worth debating what could make a successful rookie season for Edvinsson. Whereas some top-pairing goals for Edvinsson might be too rose-tinted to be realistic, there are reasonable expectations that he can be a stalwart defender in 2024-25.
“I’m very excited about Simon,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said Aug. 7. “His play toward the end of the year last year was exciting.”
The excitement might raise the bar for Edvinsson, but he doesn’t necessarily have to shatter expectations to have a good rookie season. Success and failure in professional sports are not clearly defined. Especially for a player of Edvinsson’s caliber, they fall on a spectrum full of gray areas. At the furthest ends of success, Edvinsson might be an All-Star, or he might anchor the top pairing alongside Moritz Seider. Of failure, he might spend more time in the AHL with Grand Rapids. Anything in between those extremes is on the table, all of which is impossible to label in the middle of August.
What’s possible to define is some boundaries for what Edvinsson’s success could and should look like.
Let’s start with failure. His 14-game call-up raised the bar for true success well past merely playing a full season in Detroit. He impressed coaches and teammates alike with his ability to translate his size and poise into control of the game. He and Jeff Petry played on the second pairing, and Edvinsson did more than his fair share of the workload. His success — especially after spending more of last season in Grand Rapids than he probably deserved to — was downright impressive.
However, Edvinsson’s success wasn’t singular. For his whole 16 games in 2023-24, he did fall on the negative side in his Corsi and expected goals percentages, meaning opponents took more frequent and higher quality shots during his shifts than his own Red Wings managed to do. But, it’s necessary to put all this into context. Detroit was a bad defensive team — in fact, one of the worst in terms of expected and actual goals scored against. Edvinsson’s 45% Corsi and 44.9% expected goals might look rough on paper, but they sat fourth-best and third-best among all the Red Wings’ defensemen. Edvinsson was a luminary bright spot on a blue line that, while deep, was not high-end.
Now, success in 2024-25 should mean that Edvinsson is an impact player, not just another guy in the lineup. If he stays on his current trajectory, he will be. His teammates have big expectations.
“I was very impressed,” Seider said April 18 in his exit interview. “I wasn’t really surprised, to be honest. I think everyone kind of knew what he was gonna bring to our team. I mean, he’s a big strong skater. He can pass the puck really well, isn’t afraid of blocking shots, of throwing his body around and also has a little dynamic element for his offense, and that’s definitely something that helped us.”
That dynamic offense is an interesting note, because Edvinsson’s footprint was rather small on the box score. He finished with one goal and one assist across 16 games. Respectable, but not truly impressive. Away from the realm of statistical recognition, he made some good decisions at the blue line. He laid pucks in for his forwards to work with. He found open teammates and cycled the puck. Most of all, he really didn’t turn the puck over. Poise has always been a premier trait in Edvinsson’s game, but he really put it into practice at the end of the season, not to mention that all this happened amid a near-miss playoff push.
That offense is one element that the boundaries of success for Edvinsson should hinge on. A shutdown defenseman should be the foundation for him, but his direct offensive output should steer how much of a success next season is for him. Given that Edvinson is probably going to be a second-pairing player without much power play time as far as current roster projections go, it’s probably unreasonable to judge him by the 40- or 50-point range that Seider has routinely reached. But, if Edvinsson falls somewhere in the 30s, that would be an outstanding result that Detroit should be thankful to see.
The biggest concern here is that Edvinsson doesn’t accomplish his offensive success by sacrificing his defensive impact. With such high expectations, it’s easy for a rookie to fall into the trap of chasing offense and big plays. Edvinsson’s poise puts him in situations where he sometimes bites off more than he can chew, which was part of why Detroit kept him to marinate in Grand Rapids for most of last season. Unlearning his progress could be harmful to his potential success next season.
So here, a successful season for Edvinsson comes into focus. He doesn’t have to be a world-beater on the top pairing to make a big impact. He just has to maintain his defensive impact while getting more conversion on the offensive side.
Edvinsson could blow every expectation out of the water next season, and he could just as easily fall short. That’s why these are just expectations, not guarantees. The only real guarantee is that Edvinsson gets his shot this season, and that the Red Wings could really use his help.
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