In May of last year, the Red Wings signed 23-year-old defenceman Libor Sulak from Oril Znojmo – a Czech team playing in the top Austrian league. Now with the Lahti Pelicans of the Finnish Liiga, he is absolutely destroying the competition and looking damn good as well.

He was on no one’s radar when the Red Wings signed him. Even the most hardcore of hockey fan isn’t scouring the Austrian League for the next greatest young free agent signing. But every Wings fan should be praising this organization’s scouting department for finding Sulak and convincing Ken Holland to take a chance on this young defenceman.

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Anyone that follows the seasons of Red Wings prospects close enough, knows Sulak’s name and his point totals.

27 points in 35 games is simply absurd for a defenceman in Europe. Especially in the Liiga where the history of highly-touted superstar defensive prospects is with the Swedish Hockey League in recent times: Karlsson, Ekman-Larsson, Hedman, etc.

Sulak’s season is currently 12th all-time in Points-Per-Game among U24 defenceman in the Liiga. If you just count seasons from this century, he is 3rd – behind these two guys named Erik Karlsson and Sami Vatanen.

23-year-old Erik Karlsson played for Jokerit in the Liiga during the 2012-13 lockout and put up 1.13 Pts/Gm.

21-year-old Sami Vatanen played for JYP during the 2011-12 season, before coming over to North America to continue his professional hockey dream, he recorded 0.82 Pts/Gm.

As I previously stated, Sulak is currently at a 0.77 Pts/Gm pace with still 7 games left of the season to change that number.

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His raw point totals are impressive for his age and the league he is playing in, but I looked further and deeper into the Liiga’s stats and found out that he wasn’t just a simple one-way defenceman. I believe he is the real deal.

Thank god the Liiga tracks Corsi.

The Stats

Google Translate-assisted, I was able to uncover some interesting aspects of Sulak’s season that not only makes him a reasonably-good player, but a player that I believe will play a key role in the Red Wings rise from mediocrity to the top.

Libor Sulak is the best defenceman in Finland right now.

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Playing an average of 23:38 a game, Sulak is his team’s go-to guy when it comes to all situations. Starting only 56.4% of that time in the attacking zone, Head Coach Petri Matikainen understands that Sulak provides his team with an offensive edge but is not sheltering him completely from any defensive responsibilities.

For instance in the NHL, Lightning defenceman Mikhail Sergachev is starting 69.91% of his zone starts in the offensive zone. Jon Cooper understands how much Sergachev brings offensively but does not trust him to defend against a defensive-zone faceoff.

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Matikainen trusts Sulak to defend as well as provide a nice offensive boost.

Sulak is a possession monster for the Pelicans as well.

His 5v5 CF% of 57.6 is 4th among defenceman that have played at least 25 games this season.

While he is on the ice, the Pelicans are getting the majority of the chances and attempting shots at a much higher rate than their opponents. Overall, the Pelicans have a 5v5 CF% of 52.5 and Sulak is the most important player on his team.

His outstanding point total as a defenceman is not created easily either.

There is no elite forward on this Pelicans team to just pass the puck to and acquire easy assists. The best forward on his team is Jesse Saarinen and he’s scoring at a 0.78 Pts/Gm pace, good for 21st in the league and just 0.01 Pts/Gm ahead of Sulak himself. As I have stated many times already, Sulak is the engine for his team.

He is even unlucky to only have 27 points.

While he is on the ice, his team only has a 98.4 5v5 PDO, 13th out of the 15 teams in the Liiga. Not getting the goaltending support or the right bounce of the puck for his team to be successful.

The Pelicans have a 5v5 Shot Percentage of 8.2%, 9th in the Liiga – and therefore only a 5v5 Save Percentage of 90.2%, 13th in the Liiga.

Although they look like one of the worst teams in Finland, the Lahti Pelicans are just extremely unlucky and could use an upgrade in goaltending.

They are 4th out of the 15 teams in the Liiga with that 52.5 5v5 CF% and Sulak is a major reason for that possession success.

Libor Sulak can not only possess the puck, but he can skate extremely well too.

As much as he pleases the stats nerd inside all of us; he pleases our eyes with his skating and the best hair in Finland too.

all stats and video via www.liiga.fi

His Timeline

All of his stats look amazing and he seems like he should fit right in with the Red Wings system, but all we can do is speculate right now.

At 23-years-old, he is the perfect age to play with the team’s best players for as long as both of them can. Anthony Mantha is the same age and Dylan Larkin is only 2 years younger, at 21.

There is an understanding that Sulak will come over at the start of next season to North America and play either in Detroit or Grand Rapids.

Here in North America, he joins the abundance of defensive prospects the Red Wings have, but he is a step ahead in age and also experience. Sulak might need some time adapting to the North American-style of hockey, but eventually I can see him be on the Red Wings blueline, at the very latest, by the end of next season.

Perhaps the most outlandish and honestly useless thing I have thought about Sulak is his handedness. The majority of the better Wings blueline prospects are right-handed – with good reason since that seems to be the #1 thing every team wants – a top-pairing right-handed defenceman.

Sulak is left-handed and I love it.

Filip Hronek, Vili Saarijarvi, Gustav Lindstrom and Jordan Sambrook are some of my favorite defensive prospects with the Wings organization (outside of Sulak obviously). These four players are all right-handed and all four of them might have a successful career with the Red Wings.

I might be overstepping projections and hyping up these prospects more than I should, but what Filip Hronek is doing in with the Griffins right now makes even a conservative projection is that he will be on the team next year.

Consider that and Sulak coming over, the Wings might have a neat little Czech defensive brotherhood thing going on. What a story that could be.

The best thing a team in the NHL could do is all of your players entering their prime at the same time. As it looks right now, the Red Wings have a lot of potential with their defensive prospects and they are all within only a few years of each other.

I might be thinking about it too much, but it would be nice to see the Red Wings lead the league defensively again.

Summary

Libor Sulak is a good hockey player.

Libor Sulak will be a Red Wing next season.

He leads all Liiga defenceman in Pts/Gm, is 22nd-overall among any position in Pts/Gm, plays on average 23:38 a game, has a 57.6 5v5 CF% and only starts 56.4% of his shifts in the offensive zone.

All of this while his team is having terrible luck with actually putting the puck into the net and has some of the worst goaltending in the league – with a 98.4 5v5 PDO.

Having a player like Sulak is special and he fits the mold of what winning teams have in their defenceman – an offensive puck-mover that also controls the play defensively. If he reaches his potential, I believe he can be an important piece to the Red Wings becoming a winning team again.