This season has been, if nothing else, a busy one for Flyers center prospect Jack Berglund. <\/p>\n
The last calendar year has seen him play at the SHL and U20 levels in Sweden, working hard to carve out a role for himself with his top team, take a spin through the North American game with the Phantoms in the spring, and take detours to represent his country on the national stage at both the World Juniors and World Championships. It\u2019s been a long road, and a somewhat challenging one at times, but Berglund is approaching this winding process with a great deal of care and attention, honing his game with lessons taken in at each stop. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would say [I\u2019ve learned] a lot,\u201d he reflected at this year\u2019s Development Camp. \u201cI\u2019m getting more and more like known [in terms of] what I am for type of player in juniors. Everyone can be like kind of same player and produce, [but] when you get higher up in the levels, you got to have to find your role to get your ice time. And I think that\u2019s the been the most important part of this year, and like the World Championship, to find a good role to play and to play for a win and, yeah of course World Juniors as well was great experience, and I\u2019m going to take that with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berglund stepped up as an exciting \u2014 but also valuable from a leadership standpoint, as the team\u2019s captain \u2014 piece of that Swedish team, stepping up for them in a big way on the way to their gold medal victory. It was close to as positive of a final appearance as one could have hoped for in a final year of eligibility for the tournament, making a strong impression and coming away with the hardware to match, but just as critically, it would prove to be a major jumping off point for the rest of his season, as Berglund saw his usage with Farjestad (after a coaching change) increase dramatically, and to quite positive results, in turn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the World Juniors there, I got to play more, \u201d he explained. \u201cAnd I think a lot of us as well it\u2019s like [a] confidence boost. I got to play a lot in World Juniors that I haven\u2019t been [able to] before and just took that experience with me, there. And that\u2019s what they said to me as well. And, yeah, I got a lot of time on ice and a lot of special teams as well. So that was super fun and super helpful for the future as well to get a hold of it like for a real level in SHL, and it\u2019s a great league, and yeah, so that was a great experience and I think that was helpful as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berglund saw his usage expand pretty significantly, and while he still brought to those minutes a standard defensively sound game, he also saw his production saw a nice little uptick in turn, as a reward for otherwise setting that sound foundation of play \u2014 before his time away for World Juniors, Berglund had produced just five points, all scored across just two of the first 35 games of the year, averaging around 12 or 13 minutes a night, but after his return, in jumping up to closer to 15 minutes or more per game, he recorded four goals and seven points and over his final 25 games of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though the numbers aren\u2019t world beating, it was still a pretty major step forward for him, particularly as far as the apparent trust from his coaching staff is concerned, but the work wasn\u2019t done yet. Berglund seized quickly his next challenge, joining the Phantoms on a five-game stint to close out their season, getting a taste of the North American professional game for himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a different type of game with the smaller rink for example and different type of systems, and all of that. So, like I said, great experience, very different. So, I think it was it was fun to like, to get to play those games and get to know how it is over here.\u201d<\/p>\n
And though Berglund showed some positive flashes in his brief stint with the Phantoms, it was clear that he was still working through much of an adjustment period, as the game was coming at him a good bit faster than he may have been used to. Still, he was able to take some good lessons away from his time with the Phantoms in how to attack the game at that next level. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a lot like positioning-wise,\u201d he explained, \u201cwhere [you] should be, [and] just the timing of it, it\u2019s a different timing. This, it\u2019s just kind of a different game. So I think it\u2019s a lot I need to learn and yeah, needs time, but I\u2019m excited for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if it\u2019s time that Berglund feels that he needs before he\u2019s completely, doubtlessly ready to move over to the North American game, it\u2019s time he will get. Loaned back to his SHL club in Farjestad for another season \u2014 a move that was announced back in the beginning of August \u2014 Berglund will have another year before him with an opportunity to play top minutes in Sweden\u2019s top professional league (a role he\u2019s already sliding into nicely through their slate of preseason action), continuing to hone his game and identity as a player. <\/p>\n
The silver lining here is that, for as much optimism and excitement there is surrounding him after this surge in his game and stock, there\u2019s no real need to rush Berglund to move over to the states. The Flyers and Phantoms alike have quite well stocked projected rosters as it is, they\u2019ve moved out of downright desperation mode for centers in the right now, and that\u2019s afforded them some more runway to offer Berglund to continue to develop. He was always going to be a bit of a project, but his ascension of late has shown just why the Flyers were right to be intrigued by him, and his willingness to stick with even the hardest parts of his development process has been paying off. There\u2019s still work to be done, but he\u2019s already showing a lot of promise that he can be just the type of player that the Flyers need, when he\u2019s ready and the space opens up for him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This season has been, if nothing else, a busy one for Flyers center prospect Jack Berglund. The last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-832899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}