On the Wings

Snapshots, Gorilla Crouch, and Abel to Yzerman have been all over this, but it’s big enough news to repeat: according to Matt Wuest of Red Wings Central, the long-awaited arrival of Igor Grigorenko on North American soil will finally take place this summer.

Apparently, the Wings feel he’s ready for the NHL and are planning on signing him with the intent of giving him a chance at making the team. Take it with a little grain of salt because there have been reports like this before. Still, this time it seems to be for real, even with the fact that there is currently no transfer agreement between the RSL and the NHL. That is probably a good thing, though, since I believe the Wings would have lost the rights to Igor if there was one. Anyone know for sure whether or not that’s true?

Not since Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg has there been so much anticipation for a prospect, though his transfer to North America has been hampered by serious injuries sustained in a car crash, the lockout, and his long comeback from those injuries. After a couple slow seasons (during one of which he was demoted to a lower tier of the RSL), he’s putting up fair numbers again and, based on Wuest’s article, his future looks promising.

For whatever reason, he’s never been under the knife in the States, but he was here in September 2003 to see training camp and to meet with doctors. All of his operations have taken place in Russia and the feeling is he may be a surgery or two away from being fully restored if US doctors get their hands on him.

His speed is understandably down from what it used to be and he may have trouble in the speedier NHL, but the Wings have never been all that fast so he ought to fit in. I’ll always remember hearing him described as a tougher Ilya Kovalchuk* and look forward to finally seeing him, though it may be in Grand Rapids rather than Detroit. Hopefully it won’t be like the other times they said they were bringing him Stateside.

Sidenote: I got a laugh reading that old post there. I remember Henrik Zetterberg being compared to Peter Forsberg but I’d forgotten the comparison to Robert Lang.

*He played on a line with Pavel Datsyuk and Kovalchuk in the 2003 WJCs. For an idea of what he can bring to the table, he was second in tournament scoring (6 games, 6 goals, 4 assists) that year as Russia won the gold medal.