VANCOUVER – It wasn’t only a contract that Daniel Sprong was hoping for this summer, but a home.
When he was eight, Sprong’s family moved to Montreal from Amsterdam to find hockey. But nine years since making his National Hockey League debut at age 18 with the Pittsburgh Penguins, he is still searching for a home – that place where he belongs in professional hockey.
The Vancouver Canucks became the right winger’s sixth NHL organization in six years when Sprong signed yet another one-year contract on July 20, three weeks into free agency. His modest salary of $975,000 is less than half the $2 million he made last season on his one-year deal with the Detroit Red Wings.
Before that, Sprong spent a little more than one season with the Seattle Kraken, and a little less than two years with the Washington Capitals. He also played for the Anaheim Ducks and Penguins, who selected Sprong 46th in the 2015 entry draft.
Even the best league in the world is filled with journeymen, building NHL careers a year or two at a time in one place and then moving on.
But when you see the spectacular pre-season goal Sprong scored on Wednesday against the Calgary Flames, an end-to-end rush in which he embarrassed former minor-league teammate Jarred Tinordi and tied the game 3-3 with 14 seconds remaining in the third period, the forward’s itinerant NHL existence is difficult to fathom.
How can a player with a skill set that dynamic still be looking to fit in somewhere at age 27?
“You saw that goal last night,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said Thursday after a pair of split-squad practices at the University of B.C. “He can do that. It’s sometimes in between … where he gets a little lost. (But) I’m excited to work with him; put it that way.
“He wants to learn. He came in in good shape — really good shape. He’s been texting and asking for video; he wants to be a better player. And a complete player. Like I said to you guys: seven coaches and seven different teams. He’s got to settle in and then really take this information, and can he kind of be a complete player?”
Both Sprong and the Canucks believe he can be.
That’s why he chose Vancouver’s one-year deal over a few other offers after the Red Wings let him walk following an 18-goal, 43-point season.
Sprong made his decision after an honest phone conversation with Tocchet, who asked the player he knew from the Penguins organization why he kept changing teams and why coaches didn’t trust him to play late in games.
“He’s probably too hard on himself, but, yeah, he owned it,” Tocchet said. “He’s a good kid, a really good kid.
“He shared some stuff from some of the places he’s been. So I understand where he is coming from and what he wants. I was pretty honest with him, and I said, ‘I can just promise you that we’re going to work with you and we feel as a coaching staff that we can make you a better player and put you in spots where you can really show who you are.’ But it’s going to take a lot of hard work. I sent him some video of things that he does really good, and some things that are (bad) habits. We’ve got to find the middle.”
“We had a really good talk the evening that he called me,” Sprong told Sportsnet. “We talked about, you know, hockey in general, and then pretty much about my situation. I told him some stories that coaches have told me … that didn’t really make sense. Things that happened. I think that stays between me and him, but the decision to come here was after that talk.
“The opportunity that I got told about on the phone and the situation where I could be playing, that really excited me. But like I said, that conversation I had with Toc on the phone really was the deciding factor at the end. After that call, I had a couple more calls with other teams, but I’d already made up my mind pretty much. I knew this was the place. I think the deal was done 24 hours later.”
Tocchet said Sprong was one of the best-conditioned players at training camp. Sprong chose Vancouver even after the Canucks had signed wingers Jake DeBrusk, Danton Heinen and Kiefer Sherwood when free agency opened on July 1.
Heinen is likely to start the season in two weeks alongside J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser on the top line, but there are openings for wingers on the other three lines, including beside DeBrusk and Elias Pettersson on what should be a formidable second unit.
Sprong could play up or down the lineup, but with his heavy, right shot seems like a natural to play on the second power-play unit.
“His shot right away separated him from everyone else,” Canuck centre Teddy Blueger, who played with Sprong on the Penguins’ farm team in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., in 2017-18, recalled Thursday of his initial impression of his teammate. “His shot was definitely very noticeable right away.”
So why has it taken Sprong so long to establish himself in the NHL?
“It’s tough to say,” Blueger said. “I think there’s a lot of really talented guys that maybe sometimes don’t find a home right away. And there’s a lot of guys that with maybe less talent … just stick in a certain situation. You can be really good with one team, not so good with the next. But that doesn’t change his skill level or talent, which he has always had.”
Canuck defenceman Carson Soucy, who played with Sprong in Seattle, said: “He’s definitely got that scoring ability and when he puts it all together, skates like that (on his tying goal), it’s pretty special to watch. I think Toc does a really good job of getting players to buy in. I think Daniel’s kind of seeing that and working for that right now. It’s obviously special to have that kind of skill in the lineup, but you’ve also got to play defence, so hopefully, this is the season he puts it all together.”
Including the 2022-23 season in Seattle, Sprong has 39 goals and 89 points in the last two years despite averaging just 11:44 of ice time. He said his time with the Washington Capitals, where he learned from veterans like Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie, was a turning point for him.
And yet Sprong is on his third team since the Capitals traded him to the Kraken 2½ years ago.
“I think there are areas where I can be better,” Sprong said. “I think last night, I did a pretty good job defensively. I would say there’s one (shift) in the third that I kind of chipped it out and got off (the ice), but I probably should have stayed and supported. But I think, in general, it was a good two-way game, and I’ve just got to build off that. With Toc and the coaching staff, we talk a lot. It’s not always negative. It’s nice that it’s direct, it’s honest. And if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s bad, it’s bad.”
“I don’t know if it’s maybe because he knows me a little bit from Pittsburgh … but I think he trusts me,” Tocchet said. “We’re confident that we can make him a better player.”
The Canucks visit the Kraken Friday night before starting the second half of their six-game pre-season schedule Saturday in Calgary.
