Not even a mention of Tropmann.
That’s definitely disappointing but they really are down on a lot of small players this year, so a smaller, late birthday defender not playing in the highest mens league in Germany certainly isn’t going to get much fanfare.
I'm honestly not surprised because, as we've talked about many times, he plays a very unconventional style for a player his size that probably doesn't translate all too well. He throws multiple crushing hits every game, is good offensively but without dynamic or high-end skating and stickhandling. That's not really what gets you to the NHL at 5'11''.
That said, I watched both Cologne games on the weekend and he was dominant. Really shouldn't be in the DNL anymore. I think the CHL would have been great for him.
Well, Lewandowski was a bit of a no-show at the Hlinka Gretzky this summer. Too ineffective. Too simplistic and thus, readable. Very easy to not only shut down, but force into errrors.
He did better at a little U17 tourney that took place right after that.
As for the U20.... Abstreiter has kind of been sticking to his older generations for these tourneys to date. He hasn't been one to bring all too many underagers (i.e. players under 18) and at the moment, there's little reason to believe he'll be changing that this year. In fact, he's got a pretty widespread group of young men to chose from.
This is important to note because A) Lewandowski won't be even 17 until February and B) Abstreiter was Germany's coach at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup.
We'll soon have the break where both the U20 and U18 will be playing in little test tourneys with 3 games in 4 or 5 days. The U20 teams seen there have often been pretty good indications of who the Germans will go to battle with in December. And for this year, we should definitely assume that Hauf, Sumpf, Panocha, and Lutz will be surefire participants at the WJC, but they'll not be brought over from North America for these test games. So, maybe he'd get a look.
But I'm thinking they see Lewandowski as a possibly big piece of the U18 puzzle in gaining promotion at the D1A U18 tourney in Denmark next April, so he'll most likely be with that team in all sessions this winter. That team has a new coach. The organization will surely place importance on him getting as many reps with the key U18 players as possible.
Definitely looking forward to seeing Lewandowski at the international level again after getting some DNL time (and doing really well there). At the start of the season, I didn't think he looked great, not only at the Hlinka but in the DNL too. But now he's clearly the best player on his team and looks really impressive. I still have some issues/question marks with him, especially when it comes to his foot speed, but he's been so, so impressive.
With Lewandowski I am wondering if he may have been (and still would be) better off going to Sweden or North America.
Watching him at the hlinka it felt like he had never seen anything remotely like that level of play and could not adapt. He tried to play the same game he gets to play with his club. Except he did not have the time and space to pull off any nifty passes and could not create any time and space for himself by effectively protecting the puck, because the opponents were good enough to easily knock him off the puck or simply take it away.
Maybe if he constantly faced a higher level of competition and was forced to play at higher speed, he could adapt at some point.
He has the skills to excel at a higher level if he can learn to process the game at a faster pace.
I still have high hopes for him, but he has to get back on track, because his development appears to have stalled/slowed down for a while now.
I have similar concerns with the Griva twins. The DNL is just not a good development league for players at their level.
I would not be surprised if guys like Bleicher or Zwickl who play in a pro league quite regularly and not exclusively in the DNL actually catch up to the Grivas and Lewandowskis of the world or outright surpass them.
I don't think North America really would have made sense for him. As an 07, he wouldn't be allowed to play major junior yet and the jump from German U17 would've been way too big. Maybe a Canadian academy would've been good, but that's crazy expensive. He should be a strong candidate for the CHL next season though.
Speaking of the Canadian academies, though, an interesting note re. the DNL not being a good development league. Generally I agree. However, Philipp Nuss was a decent player (decent, nothing special) at Delta Academy, one of the best programs in the country, last season. Delta, like several other CSSHL programs, consistently produces NHL-level talent. In 2021-22, the U17 team's top scorers were NHL prospects Miguel Marques, Jordan Gavin, Thomas Mrsic and Cayden Lindstrom. Lukas Dragicevic was there the previous year.
What I'm getting at is that Nuss was a top-10 scorer on his team. Now he's in Cologne as a 17-year-old, playing on the fourth line and he's without a point through 13 games. The DNL is certainly different from North American leagues and generally weaker than North American major junior or even Jr. A, but it's still a very tough league to play in as a 16- or 17-year-old. So I really don't mind guys like Lewandowski or the Grivas taking the next step there before moving on to bigger things.
There might be individual cases where the Oberliga is a better spot, like with Bleicher, whose DNL team plays in the DNL 2. But generally, I really don't mind the DNL as a step between U17 and major junior or pro for German prospects. Certainly didn't hurt Seider, Stützle or Reichel either.