Player Profile: Reintroducing Filip Hallander to the Penguins

The Penguins drafted Filip Hallander in the second round in 2018. They brought him to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2019 for the (usually annual) Prospects Camp where he trained for a few days in Cranberry at the UPMC Lemieux complex. But then they traded him in the summer of 2020 as part of the Kasperi Kapanen deal. And then yesterday they traded for Hallander to bring him back a full circle in the organization.

Let’s get to know him, or maybe remember this player a little more.

Filip Hallander just turned 21 a few weeks ago. He signed his NHL contract in the summer of 2018 with the Pens but played exclusively in Sweden, in part because of last year’s coronavirus situation. Hallander played on loan last season with Luleå, one of the best teams in SHL. And he mostly played on the left wing of the team’s top line, scoring 24 points in 51 games.

As seen above, Hallander was also part of the Swedish team’s senior squad for the world championships in 2021. He also represented his country in the world junior competitions at the U-18 and U-20 levels.

Hallander is a very complete young player, he is good in goal and ready to go for deflections and looking for rebounds. His skating is not top of the line and he also broke his leg in 2019. He is not a flashy player with a lot of ability in his hands and neither is he a more skater, but he was efficient and was able to become a front row player in a leading Swedish team. That says a lot about his overall ability and maturity at a young age to achieve a leading role for a very good team in a competitive men’s league.

Because of his play at advanced professional levels at a young age and his important role, in addition to his ability to produce points on top of that, the models believe Hallander is a type of ‘high floor, low ceiling’ prospect. “.

Although Hallander doesn’t stand out with excessive skill in his hands or feet, he remains a very solid and responsible young striker. There is no other Pens forward in the model above with a 30% chance of being a positive WAR player in over 200 NHL games, so Hallander dropping to 78% shows just how good his status and his early career progress has been impressive so far. being a likely factor for NHL based on its age data from 17 to 20 years old.

However, Hallander’s most likely ceiling and path looks like a future NHL third-row winger – or less than that, a really good fourth lining. Hallander has the intelligence and the awareness to be in the mix to also play a role in the PK unit. He probably won’t be a player who picks up the games and stands out consistently, but he has a foundation with the overall ability to be a quality player going forward.

Hallander was drafted as a natural center, but mostly played on the wing in Sweden. Time will tell if the Penguins will try to fit him into North America on the smaller rinks in the middle of the rink, and his assists totals show he might have a aptitude for it. But overall his skating and experience points to a projection of a player who will most likely end up as a left winger.

With two more years on his entry-level deal, the plan for Hallander (until we hear differently) would be for him to start in America for the 2021-22 season. It seems almost certain that he will have to prove himself at Wilkes-Barre, where the Pens will also have a more dynamic LW offensive prospect with Samuel Poulin joining the organization as well.

If Hallander’s success in the SHL translates to this side of the ocean, he believes he’ll jump from AHL to NHL fairly quickly – perhaps as soon as a mid-season call-up for Pittsburgh in 2021. -2022. Hallander does not plan to be a revolutionary talent at the highest level, but so far he has shown the IQ of hockey and his ability to become a positive and contributing member of the organization in the near future.

Pittsburgh has a missing outlook system which is very talentless for players aged 18-24 in the system with realistic NHL futures so a player of Hallander’s caliber seems like an addition very important at this point. Filip Hallander has the skills and assets to be one of the few young pieces in the organization, and that future should be sooner rather than later if he continues on the path that once fired him but has it now. brought back to the Penguins.