The New Jersey Devils came to the NHL Draft and came away with six new prospects to drool over. It all started with St. Paul's Conrad Fondrk, who they took 50th overall. However, he's not the one that had people talking. It was actually their last pick who got the conversation going.
The Devils selected Swedish defenseman Sigge Holmgren out of Sweden. He plays for the Brynas junior team. He is a prospect most analysts had no actual report on. Nobody expected the Devils to draft this player. In fact, nobody thought he was going to be drafted at all.
Sixth-round picks aren’t exactly a likely NHL player. Less than five percent of the league is made up of sixth-round picks. Bratt is expected to break the top 20 in career scoring for sixth-round picks in the history of hockey. This is a round where taking a chance makes all the sense in the world.
So, Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald taking a shot on a defenseman with little-to-no reported pedigree might be fine. But did they really go after a player who hasn’t played a hockey game in more than a year?
The Devils’ website called him a “smooth-skating, right-shot blueliner.” They say he’s a “classic late-round swing” who is “smart, mobile, and full of long-term upside.” That is a collection of buzzwords to discuss Holmgren, but it doesn’t address the elephant in the room. The article does mention that he missed the season, but it doesn’t specify why.
Why did Sigge Holmgren miss all of the 2024-25 season?
The short answer is, it hasn't been released. We searched high and low, putting dozens of articles through the translator, and nothing gave a reason for Holmgren's absence. He was expected to fight for position during Brynas's U18 season and for various U18 Sweden teams, but he seems to disappear off the map.
Holmgren was cut from the camp for the team fighting for a sport on Sweden's U18 team at the World Juniors. It didn't say he was injured because there was a specific segment for that.
After extensive research, his absence is still a mystery. We know he went to the Swedish national team camp last June with a few other Swedish prospects, but other than that, he basically disappears. We’ve found “loose” references to an injury, but not anything from a trusted source.
To be honest, the strange secrecy around the absence makes us believe it could be something else, but it’s not worth speculating. Tom Fitzgerald will hold a press conference after free agency, and we can ask him then.
But to answer the question, yes, the Devils drafted a player who played zero games last season.