Erik Brännström has played in North America
since 2018 but multiple Swedish
media sources are reporting that he will
return to Europe next season.
HockeyNews.se
is reporting that the 25-year-old Swedish defenseman is most
likely headed to Switzerland, where he would sign a long-term deal –
a scoop attributed to an Expressen.se article behind a
paywall.
The website further
notes that Genève-Servette and HC Lugano are two teams in
Switzerland’s National League who have room to add imports to their
rosters. Both teams that have generally not been afraid to pay well
for talent, particularly Genève, although both teams also struggled
and missed the playoffs this past season.
Lugano Dismisses Coach Krupp And Several Noteworthy Players
Just
days after the team saved its position in Switzerland’s
National League by defeating HC Ajoie in a playout
series, HC Lugano parted ways with head coach Uwe Krupp and several
notable players, including goaltender
Adam
Húska,
defenseman Valtteri
Pulli, and forwards Mark Arcobello, Daniel Carr, Radim
Zohorna and Aleksi Peltonen.
Originally from
Eksjö, Sweden, Brännström played
junior hockey and turned pro with HV71 in nearby Jönköping.
Brännström
was a first-round pick, 17th
overall, by the Vegas Golden Knights
in 2017 and was moved to the Ottawa
Senators in a 2019 multi-player
deal that saw Vegas acquire Mark Stone.
From 2019 to 2024,
Brännström’s career
was fairly stable – mostly playing in the NHL for Ottawa with
occasional assignments to the Belleville Senators, the team’s
nearby AHL farm team.
However,
this season has been quite chaotic for the diminutive, puck-moving
defenseman. He signed as a free-agent with the Colorado
Avalanche in the summer but was traded to the Vancouver
Canucks before the season began. After playing 28 games in
Vancouver, he was dealt to the New
York Rangers as part
of the J.T. Miller trade in late January and then traded again to
the Buffalo Sabres just prior to
the trade deadline. He has not played an NHL game for either of the
latter two teams.
Overall,
Brännström has
77 points and 162 penalty minutes in 294 NHL regular-season games.
If
he signs in Switzerland, it will be Brännström’s
second tour of duty there, although the first one only lasted 10
games with the SCL Tigers in the autumn of 2020 while the start of
the NHL season was delayed by pandemic-related restrictions.
Victor Soderstrom Wins Borje Salming Trophy As SHL’s Top Defenseman
Victor Söderström has been named the top
defenseman in the Swedish Hockey League for the 2024-25 season. As a
result, he has been awarded the Börje Salming
Trophy.
Read the full article here