According to the very credible www.mrmadhawk.se blog, Mikael Wikstrand has reached a verbal agreement to join Frölunda at the end of the year. This does not come as a surprise as rumours have been circulating ever since Wikstrand’s hot start, that he’d follow the path of a certain someone on the Ottawa Senators blueline.
This also bodes well for Wikstrand’s chances to spend Christmas and New Year’s in everyone’s favourite holiday destination Ufa. Frölunda have been courting a lot of young players from the Swedish junior national team, with Wikstrand being one of them, first-round projected André Burakowsky is another. Strangely enough, the Swedish U20 coach, Roger Rönnberg, is soon expected to be announced as the head coach of Frölunda. They still have another coach under contract for the remainder of the year and Rönnberg has a tournament to coach and a gold medal to defend, but his next destination is the worst kept secret since the first overall pick of 2005.
So, short-term, what does this mean for Wikstrand? Not very much, he’ll most likely get the WJC ticket he would’ve gotten anyway, but we can rest assured that he will be taking a step upwards on the hockey ladder next season, coached by a man who hand-picked him nine months before the puck will drop for the 2013/14 season.
Currently, Wikstrand is quarterbacking power plays for both Mora of the SEL-2 where he’s on pace to break goalscoring records for junior defenseman, as well as one of the units during the U20 tournament in Sundsvall this past weekend.
Oh, and it’s worth noting that a few other Frölunda alumni have turned out pretty well for the organization. (You be quiet, John Wikner!)
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