Towering Adam Edstrom impressing during Rangers’ experiment at center
NY Post
Adam Edstrom was drafted as a center out of Sweden, even if the hulking 6-foot-7 forward exclusively has manned the wing since joining the Rangers’ organization.
That all changed Saturday night in Minnesota, when the 25-year-old Edstrom was moved back to the middle for the first time in the NHL, centering the fourth line in a 4-2 win over the Wild.
Rangers coach Mike Sullivan believed it was Edstrom’s first time playing that position since his under-20 junior season in Sweden.
“We wanted to see what it might look like if Eddy had the capability of playing in the middle,” Sullivan said after the last-place Rangers posted a season-high fourth straight win. “Obviously, if you get a guy that’s 6-7 that has the capacity to play the position, especially in a fourth-line role, he can certainly be hard to play against with his size, his mobility, his reach. He can lean on people. In practice [Friday], they were helping him. J.T. [Miller] and [Vincent Trocheck] and Mika [Zibanejad] were helping him on the faceoff circle. I think we’ll continue to explore it with him.”
Edstrom, who previously had taken only seven draws in his NHL career, won one of his four faceoffs against the Wild over 7:33 of ice time.
Sullivan admitted the coaching staff “tried to protect” Edstrom by not sending his line out for any defensive-zone draws.
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