Hockey’s Unicorn: Elmer Soderblom
“He can shoot, he can make the right plays, he can defend, he’s a 7-footer that can shoot all the way out to the 3-point line. That’s rare. And block shots – that’s like a unicorn in this league”, said Kevin Durant of Kristaps Porzingis in 2016. The nickname ‘Unicorn’ has stuck with Porzingis through his ups and downs as a player on the New York Knicks, Dallas Mavericks, and now Washington Wizards in the NBA, and has since evolved into a term describing oversized players with skill sets normally only possessed by smaller players.
In reality, Porzingis is more of a Przewalski’s horse than a unicorn – big men with coordination and talent are not mythical creatures in the sport of basketball, they’re just uncommon: Porzingis, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Dirk Nowitzki, Karl-Anthony-Towns, and the list goes on.
Conversely, in ice hockey, oversized players are all but always restricted into very specific roles as a result of their size and limited mobility. Of course there are big, skilled players – but they tend to cap out around 6-foot-5. The truly oversized subset of hockey players in the 6-foot-7 to 6-foot-9 range include rangy, smothering shutdown defensemen such as Jamie Oleksiak or Zdeno Chara, and utility depth players like Brian Boyle, Andrej Sustr, etc. The lone exception being Tyler Myers, who was only a relatively impactful player for a couple of years at the beginning of his career before a sharp decline, as he now wallows away at the bottom of the raunchy sewage pool that is the Vancouver Canucks defensive corps.
Enter: Elmer Soderblom. A 6-foot-8, 250-pound sixth round draft pick who is perhaps the most fitting Detroit Red Wings draft selection in recent memory. This ‘unicorn’ won’t be among the league’s best players at any point in his career, but there’s a very high likelihood he’s one of the league’s most interesting, while also bringing notable on-ice value to the table. Among all under-21 skaters in the Swedish Hockey League this past season, Soderblom ranked first in goals (21), points (33), and points-per-game (0.64).
The biggest advantage an oversized forward like Soderblom has isn’t his strength, like one might think – it’s his frame. Hockey is a game of positioning, but that doesn’t just mean positioning yourself on the ice and getting open for passes – it means positioning your body and moving it fluidly to protect the puck and transport it to high danger areas. Soderblom’s height and length allows him to hold the puck an extra foot or two further from the defenseman on wide drives and in the corners.
Around the net, his stickhandling is much wider than most players, allowing him to stretch goalies and defensemen, uprooting their positioning before finishing the job.
This is the most blatantly transferable skill of Soderblom’s game. It’s a talent used frequently at even strength, but it’s on the powerplay where Soderblom will use it to earn his keep and his paycheck.
Where this falls apart for most skaters of Soderblom’s stature is that the laws of coordination prevent them from performing these high-skilled plays. The smaller one’s body is, the easier it is to make all four of one’s limbs and their torso work together fluidly, and the closer one’s eyes are to the ice, the tougher all things relating to hand-eye coordination – for instance, stickhandling – becomes. It’s for the same reason that the bulk of the NBA’s greatest shooters and ball-handlers are below league average (6’7”) in stature: Stephen Curry (6’2”), Ray Allen (6’5”), Kyrie Irving (6’2”), Allen Iverson (6’0”), etc.
The laws of coordination are but suggestions for Elmer Soderblom, however. He doesn’t sneak under players, obviously, like a Johnny Gaudreau – but he is able to weave through traffic in close quarters, and unlike many players of larger stature he’s willing to attack the middle of the ice and weave through traffic, a situation which you wouldn’t expect him to excel in.
In addition to scoring via the rush and in front of the net, Soderblom’s release allows him to finish plays created by others in the offensive zone. This could be an added bonus on the powerplay, allowing him to play a low-high game with his teammate on the half-wall (assuming his team is playing an umbrella set-up with Soderblom in front of the net) allowing them to switch roles on the fly to complicate the situation for defenders. One of the most efficient ways for a powerplay to score is to isolate a 2-on-1 somewhere on the ice, and this is yet another way to do that. Often, we see this done high in the zone between two defensemen allowing each other to get to their offside for a one-timer, such as this D-to-D exchange between Andrei Markov and P.K. Subban.
One requirement to scoring goals is having the puck. Countless complementary players have carved out roles high in a team’s lineup by winning back 50/50 pucks for their team and allowing their higher skilled teammates to engage sicko mode. Conventional wisdom would assume Soderblom’s size would allow him to fulfill this role. Strength is a massive factor in one’s ability to win puck battles, and Soderblom isn’t weak and can produce a lot of force. The reality of the situation does not reflect conventional wisdom, however. Soderblom may not be weak, but his lanky physique means that his center of gravity is significantly higher than most other players on the ice, making it tougher for him to gain leverage and achieve good body position when fighting for loose pucks. This is possibly the strongest point against Soderblom — that if his offensive skills don’t translate to success, his size doesn’t ensure it either.
Soderblom’s skating skills, which can be seen in videos linked above, is extraordinary for his size. His top-end speed is merely average, and his acceleration below average, but his lateral movement and agility are exceptional even for a player half a foot shorter. It’s this, coupled with his coordination and ability to use both at once that makes Soderblom an offensive unicorn — a never-before-seen phenomenon who will likely be making his mark at the NHL level within the next two or three seasons.
The question remains: what mark will he be able to make? Will the lack of time and space and open ice to make decisions and find skating and passing lanes hinder him enough that he’s relegated to a permanent spot in the bottom six, or even out of the league? Or will his skills transfer seamlessly?
Projecting prospects is not an exact science, but I think that a reasonable, albeit optimistic expectation for Elmer Soderblom is that he becomes an offense-first second line forward who sees time on the top powerplay, where he’ll be at his most effective. His unique skillset will allow him to be one of the most effective netfront options in the NHL and his versatility as an offensive threat will ensure any powerplay that he is a part of is very, very dangerous. At even strength, I expect Soderblom to be slightly less effective, as the lack of space to stickhandle and time to think in the NHL has a greater impact on players the more lumbering they are and the longer their movements take to complete. However, less effective doesn’t mean ineffective, and Soderblom’s history at the professional and junior level in Sweden indicates that he is still superior to his peers even in an aspect of the game that is not his best, with 22 of his 33 points (67%) coming at even strength. Among under-21 skaters in the SHL last season, only fellow Red Wings prospect, defenseman Albert Johansson (25) and Hurricanes winger Noel Gunler scored more points in all situations than Soderblom did at even-strength alone. Ultimately nobody knows what Elmer Soderblom will be at his peak, but hopefully he’s at least good enough to not be traded away for Davis Bertans.