For the second season in a row, the Vancouver Canucks have made a midsummer signing.
After signing Pius Suter in early August last offseason, the Canucks once again targeted a former Detroit Red Wings skater. This time, they inked Daniel Sprong to a one-year deal worth $975,000.
The 27-year-old now joins his fifth NHL team and third in the past three seasons.
Here are seven things to know about the newest member of the Canucks.
1. Sprong is Dutch
Although hockey has grown internationally, the NHL has rarely rostered players from the Netherlands.
Sprong, who was born in Amsterdam, became just the third player ever to be born in the Netherlands and make it to the NHL.
He was also the first Dutch player to make the NHL in nearly 30 years when he did so back in 2015-16. The last Dutch-born player to play NHL games was Ed Beers back in 1986.
Despite being born in a country where hockey isn’t a popular sport, Sprong’s father Hannie was a professional ice hockey player in the Netherlands, and he also managed a hockey team.
When Sprong suits up for the Canucks next season, it’ll mark the 20th different country that a Canucks player has been born in. Other non-hockey hotbed countries include Croatia, France, Italy, Lithuania, Serbia, and South Korea.
2. Played with teenagers in kindergarten
As you can imagine, the Netherlands isn’t exactly a hockey hotbed.
That means the Sprong family had to get creative in order to get their son ice time growing up.
Because of that, at the ages of four and five, Sprong played organized ice hockey against kids who were as old as 12 or 13.
3. Moved to Canada, but wasn’t supposed to stay
At the age of seven, the Sprong family packed their bags and moved across the Atlantic Ocean to Montreal.
However, the move wasn’t intended to be long-term.
“It started off as a joke,” Sprong explained in a 2023 interview. “We were gonna try it for a year. We would join a hockey team and try it for a season.”
As it turns out, the Sprong family never left.
“My heart and my life is in Montreal,” Sprong said. “That’s where my best friends are, that’s where I grew up, that’s where I became a man.
“Fell in love with the winter, fell in love with Montreal. It’s a very European city.”
4. Loves tequila and sushi
But not together, we hope.
In a rapid-fire interview last fall, Sprong was asked several questions about hockey and his life outside of the rink.
That led to him saying, without hesitation, that tequila is his drink of choice (in the offseason).
Casamigos, Lalo Blanco, Reposado, and Don Julio’s 1942 were the tequilas he name-checked in the interview.
When asked about his favourite food, he said seafood and sushi top his list. Perhaps that’s why he signed at a discount to play in Vancouver?
5. Traded by Rutherford once before
Sprong has ties to this Canucks organization.
Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford were with the Pittsburgh Penguins when they drafted Sprong at 46th overall back in 2015.
At the time, Sprong was considered to have first-round talent, but he fell down the draft board because of his perceived defensive flaws.
Ironically, Sprong actually cracked the Penguins lineup out of training camp. At that time, he was the first player in four years (since Brandon Saad in 2011) to make his team out of training camp in the same year as being drafted, despite not being a first-round pick.
Sprong’s stint in the NHL that season was short-lived. He scored twice in 18 games and was sent back to junior.
The Amsterdam native would play just 22 more games for the Penguins franchise in the following seasons before Rutherford traded him to the Anaheim Ducks for defenceman Marcus Pettersson in 2018. Sprong has been traded twice since then, from Anaheim to the Washington Capitals in 2020 and from the Capitals to the Seattle Kraken in 2022.
6. Once looked off Ovechkin on an odd-man rush
Most NHLers would never dare to do this.
While Sprong was with the Capitals in 2021, he had an odd-man rush with one of the most lethal goal-scorers in NHL history, Alex Ovechkin.
So, naturally, he shot the puck himself instead of passing to Ovi.
Daniel Sprong just looked off Ovechkin on a 2-on-1, shot it, scored, and this was his reaction pic.twitter.com/ZnsoJZM8Vn
— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) March 10, 2021
Apparently, it’s not the only time he’s looked off an NHL superstar on an odd-man rush.
“It’s funny because I looked off Crosby one time, so I got a good record of looking off guys,” Sprong said in this interview.
7. One of the most efficient scorers in hockey
Aside from the facts above, there’s an argument that Daniel Sprong might be one of the most fascinating players in the NHL.
Sprong has proven over the last two seasons that he’s an elite finisher. All he’s done in a fourth-line role is generate points at even strength.
Here are the league leaders in terms of even-strength points per 60 since the beginning of the 2022-23 campaign.
NaturalStatTrick.com
The 10 players ahead of him on this list are all bonafide superstars, and everyone in the top 15 is a top-six mainstay.
Sprong’s reputation for being a mediocre defensive player, which is backed up by the numbers, is the primary reason why he’s closer to a fourth-liner than a superstar in terms of his ice time.
Daniel Sprong, signed 1x$1M by VAN, is an efficient scoring winger who creates scoring chances and goals at extremely high rates in depth minutes, but never seems to gain the trust of his coaches to move up the lineup. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/shpnX6BuJm
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) July 20, 2024
Perhaps Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet and his staff can help Sprong with his all-around game. Even if they don’t, Sprong is just being paid like a fourth-liner, after all.
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