This past spring, Pierre Engvall made his long awaited North American debut with the Toronto Marlies. After HV71’s SHL post-season ended, Engvall joined the Marlies at the end of the AHL season, scoring eight points in nine games, and followed it up with another eight points in 20 playoff games when the Marlies won the Calder Cup for the first time.
Engvall has played in many leagues in Sweden, mostly in Allsvenskan, the past couple of seasons. After he was drafted, he played in three different leagues in the 14-15 season, making him a hard prospect to easily keep track of.
Elite Prospects
| Season | Team | League | GP | G | A | Pts | PM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-2015 | Frölunda HC J20 | SuperElit | 38 | 17 | 34 | 51 | 50 |
| Frölunda HC | Champions HL | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Frölunda HC | SHL | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| IK Oskarshamn | Allsvenskan | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Sweden U19 (all) | International-Jr | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Sweden U20 (all) | International-Jr | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | |
| 2015-2016 | Mora IK J20 | SuperElit | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mora IK | Allsvenskan | 50 | 12 | 12 | 24 | 12 | |
| 2016-2017 | Mora IK | Allsvenskan | 50 | 21 | 19 | 40 | 20 |
| Toronto Marlies | AHL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2017-2018 | HV71 | SHL | 31 | 7 | 13 | 20 | 12 |
| HV71 | Champions HL | 5 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| Toronto Marlies | AHL | 9 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 2 |
Engvall made a huge impact on the Marlies right away, with an almost point-per-game AHL debut — showing that his broken clavicle suffered in October is behind him (as a fellow clavicle breaker, I know how hard it is to get back to even D-level beer-league shape after one of those). Now that we can see him, and Google searches for his name turn up more articles in English — or any at all — we can see what we’ve been missing, and understand what Norm has been telling us in the comments for years.
His teammates described him after the Marlies season ended like this:
“He’s kind of a horse,” captain Ben Smith marvels. “He’s a big body, and he wants the puck—that’s the main thing. It’s his attitude and his excitement for the game, and he just works his butt off. That’s all you can ask for in a player.”
Defenceman Justin Holl notes that Engvall is “great at picking pucks off the wall and attacking the middle.”
When he was signed by the Marlies, Katya quickly summed him up like this:
He is a tall guy who plays a game that might be too soft for the AHL; we’ll have to see. He’s smart with the puck, passes well, scores in streaks, goes cold for weeks, and has been a right wing for most of this season although he shoots left.
A winger in the pros with the hands to skate circles around opponents, willing to get the puck to where it needs to go, and big enough to take on all comers; sounds like a player we’d want to rank higher than NCAA or CHL maybes. What’s with the delay in getting him on the list?
It’s the same as in real estate: location, location, location.
The longer shots are playing closer to home so we have more of a chance to see and read about them. We’re more familiar with them, and feel more comfortable putting them on our lists - the exceptions go to those who are following the European prospects closely.
Well, now Engvall has an entire season to get familiar with the smaller ice surface and rougher playing style of the AHL, and show us that he’s here to stay. He’s got plenty of fellow Swedes on his team to help him get acclimatized and ready to make the jump.
