On Friday evening, Daniel Sprong’s tenure as a Vancouver Canuck ended before it turned either a month or 10 games old. The Canucks—who signed the Amsterdam-born winger to a one year, $975,00 contract on July 20th—announced a trade sending him back to the Seattle Kraken for future considerations. Sprong’s time in Vancouver wraps up after nine games, a goal, and two assists.
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As Red Wings fans will recall from last summer’s Jake Walman trade, future considerations tends to mean, at least more often than not, nothing, so the implicit message in the deal is fairly clear: the Canucks didn’t see room in their plans for Sprong, despite being on a cheap deal and (as ever) reasonably productive in limited minutes. In that sentiment, Vancouver appears arrived at the same conclusion Steve Yzerman did at the end of Sprong’s season in Detroit: Even at a discounted rate, the offense he provides (which makes him alluring to each time he encounters) doesn’t outweigh what he gives back defensively.
When I think about Sprong’s game, I am reminded of an idea hockey consultant Jack Han discussed with The Hockey News over the summer, addressing the importance of self-awareness to player development:
“If you’re whole identity as a player growing up and in junior is you’re the guy who shoots the puck, you get 30, 40, 50 goals a year, well when you hit the NHL, you have to make a very conscious decision of do I double down on my strength or do I start working on some of the other areas of my game? And the answer is different for everybody, depending on your skillset, your mindset, your mental make-up, the resources you have access to, your physical build. But this idea of finding the product, which is you, and market, which is the team and the league—finding the fit between those two things is really a separating factor between guys who play in the league and do well for a little bit and guys who really have staying power.”
From the moment I first heard Han say it, that idea—of a choice between doubling down on who you’ve been or adapting to what the league might want you to become—makes think of Sprong. It’s not hard to see what decision he made, and now, at 27, we have a decent idea of what the league makes of his decision.
It’s not as though Sprong is entirely devoid of suitors, though the market is certainly thinning, and it’s worth highlighting that the Kraken are going into their experience eyes wide open. He played 82 games for Seattle across two seasons, from 2021-2023. In those 82 games, he scored 27 goals and gave 25 assists. The Kraken have to score more, so it’s worth it to take a swing on the inexpensive Sprong, hoping you have the infrastructure to compensate for his defensive deficiencies. Still, there is also a pattern to Sprong’s career, from Pittsburgh to Washington to his first stint in Seattle and onto Detroit and now Vancouver: teams never seem too concerned about watching him depart.
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