The Philadelphia Flyers have made their second off-season addition to their scouting department. In June, the club hired recently retired goaltender Antero Niittymäki to scout goalies in Europe and, eventually, to track players of all positions. This month, the Flyers hired Swedish scout Joakim Grundberg to scour his native country for talent.
Ever since the organization let Inge Hammarström go in 2008, they had been without a full-time Swedish scout. Ilkka Sinisalo, based in Finland, had been doing much of the scouting work in Sweden as well as his extensive duties in Finland and elsewhere. Sinisalo has become the Flyers de facto chief European scout in recent years, working in conjunction with Chris Pryor, the Flyers Director of Scouting (formerly Director of Hockey Operations), and coordinating efforts with the European scouts assigned to particular regions.
With Sinisalo carrying such a full plate of responsibilities, the Flyers were not able to have a scout dedicated specifically to tracking talent-rich Sweden. The hiring of the 33-year-old Grundberg, who has rapidly gained the reputation as being one the most astute and energetic young scouts not only in Sweden but anywhere in Europe, corrects this situation.
A native of Örnsköldsvik, Sweden (home of Modo Hockey), Grundberg is a former player from Modo's world-famous junior development program. As a player, the left winger topped out in the Allsvenskan (highest minor league) level. A few years ago, he realized that his hockey future lay in a role off the ice rather than as a player. Grundberg, whose residence is now in Stockholm, has served as a talent scout for Modo's program since 2009.
Although his new position with the Flyers is a full-time job, Grundberg also plans to continue working for Modo. Players who may not be right for the NHL might still be candidates to play in the Swedish Hockey League and even potential NHL prospects need places such as Modo's J18, J20 and SHL rosters to develop. Grundberg's deal with the Flyers is a two-year arrangement but has the potential to become a much longer-term arrangement for the upwardly mobile young scout.
While the Flyers did their own scouting of Hägg prior to choosing him with the 41st overall pick of the 2013 Draft, Grundberg's was one of the "outsider" opinions they solicited on the player before Philly officially hired Grundberg this month. Now that he's been added to the Flyers scouting staff, Grundberg will work side-by-side with Sinisalo and also stay in communication with Pryor.
Apart from head European scout Sinisalo and goaltending scout Niittymäki, the rest of the Flyers' European-based scouting staff consists of Matti Kautto (Finland) and veteran scouts Vaclav Slansky (Czech Republic and Slovakia) and Evgeny Zimin (Russia and former Soviet Republics). Additional scouting assignments, such as viewing players in Switzerland, Germany or Austria, are also performed by this staff. Both European-based and North American-based scouts work at major international tournaments such as the Under-20 and Under-18 World Championships.
Since the late 1990s to early 2000s, the Flyers once-extensive scouting activities within Sweden began to lag behind other NHL organizations; most notably, Detroit and Vancouver. Until the selection of Modo defenseman Robert Hägg in the second round of the 2013 NHL Draft, the Flyers have drafted relatively few players who were playing in Sweden in their Draft year and none above round three since the first-round selection of Peter Forsberg (himself a Modo product) in 1991.
Hammarström, a former NHL player, was hired by former Flyers general manager Russ Farwell in 1990 after doing European-based work for Central Scouting. He built his reputation on recommending Mikael Renberg, Forsberg and Johan Hedberg to the Flyers. He was retained as a scout after Farwell's departure and the ascension of Paul Holmgren (then Bob Clarke's assistant general manager) as overseer of the farm system.
Somewhere along the way, Hammarström and the Flyers organization began to have disagreements over both the prioritization of certain types of players and the methods of developing European players. In a December 2006
interview with the IIHF Ice Times, Hammarström said that he was no fan of what he perceived as an overemphasis on size and a leaguewide tendency in the NHL to try to rush talent over to North American leagues rather than having them primarily develop at home.
Hammarström's view: If players are NHL-caliber, let them prove it first at home where there is more continuity to their development and a have a support system in place. The better players can then come over when they are truly NHL ready.
Said Hammarström to the Ice Times, "I have had disputes with offices from the club I work for and also with other scouts over this issue."
Hammarström claimed that the approach taken by players such as Washington's Nicklas Bäckström, Forsberg and Renberg to wait an extra season or two to come over to the NHL ultimately resulted in them being better NHL players. NHL teams, he said, had become too impatient to wait for their young European prospects to become both physically and mentally ready for the challenges of the NHL.
Hammarström also commented on his relief over the more recent move away from what he saw as an over-emphasis on scouting for size, saying "you could barely watch the games" in the late '90s to early 2000s.
"I don't dare to speculate how many talents we lost during those years," he said.
The Flyers' drop-off in both the draft-day selection and development of Swedish players was noticeable from the time of Clarke's return as general manager until very recent teams. How much Hammarström eventually became part of the organization's Swedish problem -- or just not enough of an influential voice to make a difference in the organization -- is a matter of speculation.
What can't be disputed is that a once-deep Swedish talent well dried up on the Flyers for many years. Here's a look at the Flyers' Draft selections from Swedish leagues from 1995 to 2012:
1995: None
1996: Per-Ragnar Bergkvist G, Leksand system (5/124)
1997: Pär Styf D, Modo system (9/240, now an assistant coach for Modo's J20 team)
1998: None
1999: David Nyström RW, Frölunda system (8/224)
2000: None
2001: None (Defenseman David Printz, an AIK Stockholm product the Flyers chose in the seventh round of this Draft, was playing in North America at the time)
2002: None
2003: None
2004: None
2005: None
2006: None
2007: None (Speedy winger Mario Kempe, a Modo junior product the Flyers chose in the 5th round, was playing in the QMJHL in his Draft year)
2008: Joacim Eriksson G, Brynäs system (7/196, recently signed by Vancouver as a free agent)
2009: Simon Bertilsson, D Brynäs system (3/87). Danish defenseman Oliver Lauridsen, who played some of his junior hockey in Sweden, was playing collegiate hockey for St. Cloud State in his Draft year.
2010: Ricard Blidstrand D, AIK system (had committed to play following season in North America, and was chosen in Import Draft by WHL's Regina Pats)
2011: None
2012: Fredric Larsson, D Brynäs system (played last season with Brynäs J20, likely to play in USHL in 2013-14).
The Flyers record of scouting draft-worthy Swedish talent, selecting these players and developing them into NHL-ready pros has been absolutely pathetic since the mid-1990s.
Let's put it this way: Over a span of 15-plus Draft years, the team missed out on EVERY NHL player who played in Sweden in his Draft year. Printz, a future AHL player who had a cup of coffee with the Flyers, was as close it got for Philly. The free agent signings of Erik Gustafsson (NCAA hockey) and 28-year-old Finnish forward Mika Pyörälä (who had been playing in Sweden prior to Philly signing him) hardly make up for that gap.
Hopefully, the hiring of Grundberg and the drafting of Hägg marks the beginning of the Flyers turning a corner in their Swedish scouting and drafting. There is still a lot of ground to make up to get back where the team was 20-plus years ago.
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Former Flyers forward Ian Laperriere, now the organization's Director of Player Development, will be participating in the Ironman Mont-Tremblant: North American Championship on August 18. Apart from competing in the triatholon, Lappy is raising funds for a variety of charitable causes: the IRONMAN Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and Go4theGoal Foundation- Tunes4Teens. Laperriere has set a $10,000 fundraising goal. For more information or to make a donation,
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