Simon Edvinsson rising to the challenge at crucial moment for Red Wings

PITTSBURGH — Simon Edvinsson took a beat to exhale.

The Red Wings' 6-foot-6 blueliner was just minutes removed from scoring his first career overtime game winner, a towel draped around his shoulders in the visitors locker room after he said someone had "lost" his hoodie. But he hardly seemed bothered.

"That," Edvinsson said, "felt really good."

The Red Wings have asked a lot of their 21-year-old defenseman this season. Edvinsson came into training camp as a lock to make the roster in a top-four role after a strong finish to last season, but he still had just 25 career NHL games to his name on opening night.

Rather than pump the brakes with him, though, Detroit has hit the gas. Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde quickly moved Edvinsson up to the team's top defense pairing, taking on the league's toughest competition every night alongside Moritz Seider . Wednesday, that meant a heavy dose of Sidney Crosby — in a game the Red Wings desperately needed to win.

And Edvinsson delivered it.

Jumping on for a line change a minute and a half into overtime, Edvinsson got right into the play and found himself open in the slot, taking a pass from Alex DeBrincat and then stickhandling around a Penguins defender and beating Alex Nedeljkovic for the 3-2 win.

"We battled all game and to get that goal at the end and 2 points — it's huge," Edvinsson said.

Offense, frankly, isn't the number one thing Detroit is asking of Edvinsson. The defensive minutes he takes are beyond unusual for a player so early in his career. And yet, night in and night out, he's proving he can handle it.

"He's an elite talent," said Red Wings forward Jonatan Berggren , who tallied his first goal of the season to open the scoring for the Red Wings.

That doesn't mean Edvinsson has been without mistakes, and he made a fairly impactful one over the weekend in the Red Wings' 4-0 loss to the Rangers , taking a penalty that led to New York 's first goal. That game was arguably the best the Red Wings had played as a team all season, dictating play against the reigning Presidents' Trophy winners, and yet they came up on the wrong end of the result. Then they had to sit on that result for four days.

Lalonde admitted he was concerned about the long layoff, with the team sitting on that disappointment.

They responded well to begin Wednesday's game — Detroit raced out to a 2-0 lead early in the second period, again controlling play for the better part of 25 minutes — but the Penguins woke up quickly after that, tying the game at 2-2 and then threatening to take it outright. It could have gone either way, at that point.

"There's nights you play Pittsburgh that Sidney and (Evgeni) Malkin look like they're going to take the game over," Lalonde said. "And this was one of those nights."

Between the two of them, Crosby and Malkin finished with 12 shots on goal. That's a big part of why Seider and Edvinsson — who came into the game grading out as one of the league's best pairings, particularly defensively — had a bit of an uncharacteristic night, giving up some high-danger chances. Seider in particular didn't look like himself, getting burned by Bryan Rust on the Penguins' first goal.

But when the game went to overtime, it was Edvinsson stepping up to claim the 2 points for Detroit at the start of a four-game road trip that feels massive for the team's early-season psyche.

It was just the latest way Edvinsson has validated Lalonde's trust in giving him huge minutes so early in his career.

"He's earned it," Lalonde said earlier this week.

Edvinsson has always had the pedigree. He was the No. 6 pick in the 2021 NHL Draft, just as Seider had been two years prior. In that sense, maybe it seems obvious the two would partner to take Detroit's toughest minutes.

But you don't need to look any further than Seider to see how challenging that can be early in a young player's career. In a similar workload last season, Seider handled his role against elite-quality competition, but he mostly had to weather the storm against that nightly onslaught. Advanced metrics don't tell the whole story, but Detroit nonetheless conceded more goals and expected goals than it generated with Seider on the ice at five-on-five last season.

This year, next to Edvinsson? The two entered Wednesday's game with a 61 percent five-on-five expected goals share — an elite number that is staggering given their workload. Their actual goals share was even better.

That number probably won't stay quite so high all year, but it speaks to how quickly the pair has meshed atop Detroit's lineup: Two young, big, mobile blueliners building chemistry in real-time.

"Definitely length is part of it," Red Wings forward Andrew Copp said. "As an offensive player, going against guys that have that type of size and reach is really hard, and then when (you have) their ability to be physical and skate — the combination of the three kind of makes you an elite defender."

Again, this was always probably the vision for Detroit in drafting both players. But it's how quickly they've arrived at this level together that's so impressive. And while Seider is still the more consistent, impactful player on a night-to-night basis, Edvinsson getting up to speed so quickly has been essential to enable this deployment.

"Mo's been doing that for a while, and it's a lot to ask, but he's a competitor, he wants those matchups," defenseman Jeff Petry said. "He wants to be out on the ice with those top lines. And I think everybody sees that from him, and everybody wants to kind of elevate and be like that."

Petry pointed to Edvinsson's eagerness to watch video in his growth, learning from what didn't work and looking to get better. Edvinsson likes to watch his own shifts, seeing what he could have done in certain situations, where opponents are going and looking for patterns. Edvinsson has applied that to his tough matchups, too, doing some extra scouting to see what his elite opponents do well.

And while there's still plenty of polishing to be done with his overall game, it's all paying off so far.

Wednesday, he was out there against one of his childhood idols in Erik Karlsson . He went head-to-head with two era-defining players in Crosby and Malkin. But in the end, it was him celebrating the winning goal, extending his wingspan to the visiting crowd.

As his postgame press conference came to a close a few minutes later, Edvinsson was asked if he thought someone might have stolen his missing hoodie on purpose.

"I don't know what it is," Edvinsson laughed. "I have to figure that out. Go as a detective."

If the rest of his young career is any indication, here's betting he'll figure it out quickly.

(Top photo: Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)