Minnesota Wild: Eriksson-Ek Earned His Debut Night Goal
Joel Eriksson-Ek’s Minnesota Wild debut goal in New Jersey on Saturday was outstanding as the 19-year-old got his NHL career started the right way. It really is only fitting that the young Swede’s hard work to get to the NHL should be reward in such a great moment.
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The NHL debut of a player is something that is always exciting. You take a look a player and you see the hard work put in on a long road from childhood to now. Some roads are longer than others, and some roads have more perils than others. It’s a darn rare thing to play hockey professionally, and it’s even rarer to play in the world’s best professional league the NHL.
As fans of the Minnesota Wild we all were treated to a very good debut story the other night in New Jersey, as young Swedish center Joel Eriksson-Ek took the ice for the first time in the NHL regular season. The 19-year old Eriksson-Ek was the Wild’s 2015 first round draft pick and has grown leaps and bounds to be to the Wild’s prospect depth chart in only a little bit over a year.
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But making the NHL roster was an accomplishment in of itself considering the exponential growth mentally and physically by Eriksson-Ek over the last year. Coming out of Farjestad in Sweden he had only played 41 games against non-junior competition last season. He tallied nine goals which was good enough to lead among junior aged players in the Swedish Elite league.
Eriksson-Ek saw an opportunity get better and decided to start playing in the full-up Swedish elite league to get some valuable playing time against bigger players closer to the competition he’d find in the NHL. That was his goal since being drafted and he seemed to have worked very hard to make that goal reality over the last year.
During the Wild’s Summer Development Camp it was obvious that he had done what he need to physically as well as mechanically to gain notice by the Wild brass. The Wild’s head of player development Brad Bombardier said in an interview between halves of the final camp scrimmage that Eriksson-Ek “Showed up to camp as a man”, explaining that he had added a lot of muscle and was looking more and more like an NHL ready player.
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Perhaps the biggest statement on how much Eriksson-Ek has worked over last season and this summer, is his results. In training camp he played so well that he should have made the opening night roster. An immigration issue mixed with some salary cap issues kept him out of the lineup though.
To punctuate his hard work he scored in his AHL debut, and then turned around that same weekend and scored in his NHL debut in New Jersey. When you read the news, you weren’t surprised you just kinda knew this kid was that good. And to top it all off the look on his face on the bench after the goal was the best…just a small modest smile from a kid who had just seen his dream and hard work come to fruition.
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Going forward it’s safe to say that there’s more great moments from Eriksson-Ek. The Wild have a future top two center on their hands and could look to have him for years. The fast development seems to have taken everyone except Eriksson-Ek by surprise. He knew he just had to work to get here, so he did.