So the European flavor of the day is future Red Wing Ville Leino, who's the greatest thing since Dallas signee Fabian Brunnstrom (who was the greatest thing since who, Jiri Dopita?). And actually, Leino is apparently better than Brunnstrom, despite being the less-hyped of the Scandanavians (I guess the Wings are kicking the Stars' butts there, too).Leino is also further proof of the sheer genius of Ken Holland and the Red Wings' European scouting brain-trust (apparently they have a "new Finnish scout" to add to the group that not only knew how good Henrik Zetterberg was going to be, but also had the insight to know that everyone else was so friggin' clueless that they could waste picks on guys like Andrei Maximenko and wait until the seventh round to snag Hank). I mean, here's a guy (Leino) who finished second in Finland's top league in scoring and was the League MVP -- the only way he ends up on a team's radar is if that team has
Now, to make a point, I'm willing to admit that I'm a total roster geek when it comes to my video games. So when I went to see if Leino was in the game (he is), I noticed that he's got a very good rating. How good? His 83 rating is the best rating of any player in the SM-Liiga under the age of 28 who wasn't drafted by an NHL team (and only Kim Hirschovits, a 2002 Rangers pick, is rated higher than Leino).
Which leaves us with two questions: First, is the Red Wings' system of European scouts really as impressive as
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. holy crap, it really IS in the game.
Posted at 6:38AM on May 13th 2008 by Miss Gossip
2. Ville Leino is also a beast in NHL EHM 07.
But seriously, maybe we should at least wait until he actually plays a game in the nhl before praising the genius of Detroit, and claiming that they owned Dallas who end up with Brunnstrom.
And by the way, Detroit seemed pretty high on Brunnstrom too, so it's not like they snubbed him because they preferred Leino.
Posted at 6:39AM on May 13th 2008 by gg