Gustav Lindström Is North America-Bound
By John Beiser
4 years agoRed Wings prospect defenseman Gustav Lindström is North America-bound for the 2019-20 season as stated by him in an interview covered by Swedish newspapers.
Lindström, 20, spent the past season with Frölunda of the SHL, which was his first season in the senior league in Sweden. Lindström registered 6 points in 40 regular season games and 0 points in 6 playoff games during Frölunda’s run to win the LeMat trophy, the SHL’s championship. Frölunda also takes part in what’s called the Champions League, a collection of some of the best teams throughout all of Europe. In Champions League action, Lindström recorded 6 points in 11 games during Frölunda’s championship run.
Lindström played the fourth most minutes on the team at 18:00 minutes of ice time per game during the regular season. He wasn’t able to have as big of an impact as he wanted to have in the playoffs due to an MCL sprain he suffered in late January. The team was rolling and Coach Rönnberg had no reason to tinker with a hot team.
Swedish Newspaper Expressen interviewed Lindström and in this Google-translated segment, they discussed his future plans:
“The 20-year-old hill is one of the players who now leaves Frölunda after the golden year. Lindström is under contract with the NHL club Detroit Red Wings, which determines how his future will look.
– It will be the US for me. I have had meetings with the sports manager now and then and it is decided that I will not be left in Frölunda. Detroit wants me over to next year and I feel it is a good time to be there, he says to GP and continues:
– I think it will be NHL or AHL for me. But if it was going to shine and you want to go home to Sweden then I have a contract with Frölunda so there is little choice there. I wrote two years with Frölunda so if I go home to Sweden I have a contract with Frölunda.”
Long story short, Lindström stated that he’s NHL or AHL bound and there are plenty of spots to be had in Grand Rapids -his most likely landing spot- with Dennis Cholowski and Filip Hronek graduating, Jake Chelios and Dylan McIlrath having UFA status, and Joe Hicketts and Libor Sulak having RFA status. If he ends up in Grand Rapids, he’d be joining longtime Griffin Brian Lashoff, Vili Saarijärvi, and free agent signing Charles-Édouard D’Astous on the back end on what will be a completely different looking Griffins team.
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