It's not just about the size of the ice

A look at Michael Brandsegg-Nygård's decision and comparing the AHL and SHL when it comes to development.

Earlier this week, on Sunday, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård had a conversation with the Detroit Red Wings about where he would play this season.

The Red Wings, and general manager Steve Yzerman, wanted Brandsegg-Nygård to play in the AHL with the Grand Rapids Griffins. Brandsegg-Nygård wanted to play with Skellefteå back in Sweden.

In the end Brandsegg-Nygård won out, the Red Wings honored his decision, and the 2024 first-round pick is currently back in Sweden with Skellefteå.

It’s an interesting case study in development and where/when a player should play in various leagues during their development.

Brandsegg-Nygård wasn’t NHL ready in the preseason in my view, but he also wasn’t too far off in his five games based on his play. He also saw the reality of how the Red Wings are built this season, if Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson are already road-blocked by older players — and this was before the Auston Watson was signed — there was no realistic chance Brandsegg-Nygård would be an NHL viable option this season, for better or worse.

So the player chose to go back to Sweden, fittingly he’ll be teammates with fellow Red Wings prospect Axel Sandin-Pellikka, so I guess I’ll be watching lots of Skellefteå film.

After practice on Monday I caught up with Red Wings forward Jonatan Berggren about player development and his views on AHL vs. SHL.

Berggren knows Brandsegg-Nygård decently well, they spoke often during training camp, and Berggren also played for Skellefteå in the three seasons after his draft year. Berggren is now entering his fifth season in North America, a tenure that has been a back-and-forth journey between Detroit and Grand Rapids.

So I asked Berggren about the pros and cons of both leagues from a development perspective.

I half-expected an answer about ice size, because that’s something media members like to parrot when talking about a young European moving across the Atlantic.

(Side note, in Norway, where Brandsegg-Nygård is from, they actually play primarily on NHL-sized rinks.)

“It’s not about the ice size, really at all,” Berggren said. “You get used to that quickly, it’s the other things, and I talked to (Brandsegg-Nygård) a bit before he went back home.”

Berggren said there are advantages of playing in the AHL, but the atmosphere and culture are completely different than in Sweden. In the AHL, the Grand Rapids Griffins main job is to develop for the Red Wings, winning is secondary. In the SHL, Skellefteå’s job is to try and win league titles, development comes secondary.

Berggren isn’t wrong, in fact I co-authored an entire book about AHL hockey that dove into this subject. Teams, management, players, agents, and coaches all know this. At the end of the day, a successful AHL coach is one that creates NHL players on the cheap in a salary cap world.

Griffins coach Dan Watson knows this. Last season he and I had a lengthy chat about how his job changed when he was promoted from the ECHL to the AHL. With the Toledo Walleye, the goal was always about winning the Kelly Cup — the ECHL, frankly, isn’t a prospect league — while in Grand Rapids he’s well aware his game was always the second-most-important one that evening.

It’s why I believe coaching in the AHL is one of the most difficult jobs in hockey. Your job description rarely matches how most people will publicly judge whether you are successful or not.

When I put out a tweet about Berggren’s comments yesterday, some people took this as a shot at the Red Wings and how Yzerman runs things. Honestly, I probably should have written this whole story before tweeting (note to self: tweet less, write more), because I took it as more of a matter-of-factual commentary on the state of the two leagues, not the state of the Grand Rapids Griffins.

As much as I love the AHL, and I’m very much in this spot because I covered that league closely, it’s not well attended and aside from the postseason and a some select markets, there isn’t much atmosphere or stakes.

In fact, it’s gotten worse in recent years as the AHL has expanded their playoff format. The regular season is largely meaningless when it comes to postseason qualification, I know one AHL coach, for example, has told me that his old AHL contract used to include playoff bonuses, which the team has since eliminated since making the playoffs is no longer something worthy of a bonus.

Compare that to the SHL, where teams not only have to try to win when it comes to the title race, but they also have to try and avoid relegation. Every game matters, not just to the team, but to everyone in town.

As Berggren put it, Skellefteå winning or losing can impact the attitude of everyone in town.

So for a player, trying to grow and develop a “winning” mentality, the SHL makes sense. Brandsegg-Nygård won’t be gifted ice time and he’ll have to earn his opportunities, while in Grand Rapids part of the plan would be to put him in top roles win or lose.

We won’t know if this was the right or wrong decision for Brandsegg-Nygård until the season plays out. Maybe he earns that top spot with Skellefteå and thrives, maybe he struggles and Red Wings management will silently grumble about how he could have been playing more in Grand Rapids.

Either way, the player made his pick and had the right to do so. No we all watch and see how it plays out.