The last two times out, as Red Wings coach Todd McLellan and his staff have put together their lineup, they have omitted Jonatan Berggren's name from the forward group.

Berggren last featured in the Detroit lineup last Friday in Washington against the Capitals, where he played 17:00 minutes (his second highest total of the season).  In the two subsequent games (against Ottawa and then Buffalo), the 24-year-old has been a healthy scratch.

There are a few factors that help explain Berggren's absence from the lineup, perhaps most notably the emergence of Elmer Soderblom and the role Berggren is best suited to.  On Thursday afternoon, McLellan explained Berggren's path back into the Red Wings lineup.

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"He's very capable of filling in," McLellan said of Berggren.  "I think he fits the top three lines better than he does the fourth line, and he's a talented young man.  Just sometimes, your number isn't called, and you've got to figure out a way to get back in there and steal ice time from teammates.  We all preach team, but sometimes you gotta steal from your teammate.  And if you're doing a real good job, you're stealing it here.  When Elmer showed up and when [Marco Kasper] started playing really well, they started to steal a little bit of his ice time.  But Berggy's very capable of playing and he will play."

There are a few different points McLellan makes in that assessment that are worth explicating, beginning with the idea that Berggren isn't naturally suited to a fourth line role.  Soderblom is not the only call-up from the Grand Rapids Griffins to have (at least for the moment) supplanted Berggren in the Detroit pecking order.  So too has Dominik Shine.

However, Berggren and Shine aren't really competing for the same minutes.  Shine is a career grinder, cutting his teeth with Grand Rapids in a simple defensive role while also showing a willingness and an aptitude for fighting.  That's not Berggren's game, and it never will be.  Berggren's game revolves around his creativity and playmaking; that's not what McLellan is looking for out of the minutes currently played by Shine.

Soderblom, however, is a bit of a different story.  Since being called up in late January as Detroit managed injury woes, Soderblom has made himself indispensable by playing a hard and physical game.  He's played mostly in a bottom six grinding role, but lately, he's proven his value as a worker riding shotgun on the Red Wings' top line with Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond—winning back pucks, establishing offensive zone possession, and showing some flashes of speed and skill in transition. 

Berggren has the skill to fit with some of Detroit's top offensive gunners, but he hasn't shown the other layers to his game that might make him essential and valuable playing beside those talents.  Meanwhile, unlike Kasper, Berggren can't move between the wing and center positions to keep himself useful.  

Berggren will inevitably fold back into Detroit's lineup before too long, whether because of injury or simply a shake-up.  His challenge, in stealing back some minutes from a teammate to borrow McLellan's phrase, will be to find a way to prove his necessity, as Soderblom and Kasper have.

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