Eddie-Bo Franzen is headed to Detroit, and the son of Johan “the Mule” Franzen is doing it in a hurry.
The 15-year-old is joining the Little Caesar’s 15U AAA team for the upcoming season, a move that sends him across the Atlantic much earlier in his career than his father made the jump. It also makes him the first Swedish player on the team.
Franzen arrives after a strong season with Linkoping HC’s U16 team in Sweden’s top junior division. In 15 games, the 6-foot, 180-pound forward put up 14 goals and 5 assists. The games may be tough to track from the U.S., but the profile is easy enough to spot: plenty of net-front presence and a physical edge that looks a lot like Johan’s.
There will be a real adjustment waiting for him. He’ll have to get used to the smaller American ice, and he’ll be doing it in a new country. He also won’t just be the first Swede on the team - he’ll be the only Swedish player in the league this year.
That kind of transition isn’t exactly new ground for the Franzen family. Johan Franzen spent his entire 11-year NHL career in Detroit, and Eddie-Bo has already lived in America before. Swedish reporting says he’ll be living with Chris Osgood, his father’s former netminder, in the same city where Johan became a Red Wing mainstay.
The connection runs deeper than that, too. The Senior Adviser to Eddie-Bo’s new team was once described by his father as “the funniest man he’d met in the NHL.”
For Eddie-Bo, Detroit is familiar territory in more ways than one, even if the old arena is gone now that the Joe was demolished a few years back. Whether he ever ends up wearing a Red Wings sweater is still a long way off, but the family ties don’t hurt. The Red Wings also drafted another Osgood-family billet this past year, with the young Victor Plante.
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