Wojciech Stachowiak won’t be back with the Detroit Red Wings organization, but he’s already landed on his feet with a fresh opportunity in Sweden.
Stachowiak, who spent last season with the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins after the Red Wings acquired him in a late-season trade, has signed a two-year deal with Örebro in the SHL, Sweden’s top league. It’s a move that takes him into his first season in the league and gives him a new start after what he had hoped would be another year in Detroit’s system.
“It’s my first season in the SHL, so it will be a new chapter for me, but I think my playing style will fit very well,” Stachowiak told Swedish website Expressen. “I can’t wait to get started and experience the atmosphere.
“I’m really looking forward to coming to Örebro, a team that is ready to be there and fight at the top and win.”
The path there got a little bumpy after Stachowiak put up 15 points in 10 games for Grand Rapids. He believed that performance would be enough to earn another contract from the Red Wings, but Detroit never gave him a qualifying offer, which sent him into unrestricted free agency.
“We negotiated and talked a lot,” Stachowiak told the German website Eishockey News. “In the end, it didn’t sound like a priority for them to bring me into the NHL.”
Örebro moved quickly once Finnish forward Teemu Turunen became unavailable after announcing the requirement to remain in Finland for family reasons. To make the signing happen, the club bought Stachowiak out of a contract with Ingolstadt in Germany’s top league, the DEL.
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