Blackhawks’ Anton Frondell Among Six Prospects Named To Team Sweden
Top Chicago Blackhawks prospect Anton Frondell is set to head back overseas after joining Chicago for the final 12 games of the regular season. He will join Team Sweden at the 2026 World Championships set to take place in Switzerland per Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. Frondell is one of six players named to Sweden’s roster who also played for the country in the 2026 World Junior Championship.
Also named to the Swedish roster are top draft prospects Ivar Stenberg and Viggo Bjorck, Philadelphia Flyers prospect Jack Berglund, St. Louis Blues prospect Love Harenstam, and Winnipeg Jets prospect Sascha Boumedienne.
Frondell could be a star addition to the Swedish roster. He scored 20 goals and 28 points through 43 games in Sweden’s SHL this season. It was a standout performance that led Djugardens IF in goals just one year after Frondell formed a dynamic duo with New York Islanders prospect Victor Eklund to help Djugardens earn a promotion from Sweden’s HockeyAllsvenskan. Frondell continued to prove his worth as a high-end scorer in his move to the NHL. He finished Chicago’s season with three goals and nine points. That is the highest per-game scoring in the NHL of any player on Sweden’s roster this season – though the Tre Kronor roster is younger than usual.
Usual batterymate, Eklund, may not be able to join Sweden in time to make the roster. He is set to play in the AHL’s Calder Cup Playoffs with the Bridgeport Islanders, where he has already racked up 10 points in nine games. Bridgeport faces a perennial Calder Cup threat in the first round – the Hershey Bears. That will make for a competitive series that could lead Eklund to the World Championships with an early exit – though the Islanders are a formidable lineup of their own with the additions of Eklund, Cole Eiserman, and Calum Ritchie
Frondell will likely line up on Sweden’s top-line alongside two of Stenberg, Bjorck, Jakob Silfverberg, Nils Hoglander, or Linus Karlsson. The latter two spent their seasons with the Vancouver Canucks and scored five and 35 points respectively. Canucks defense prospect Tom Willander was also invited to join Sweden’s roster but declined to focus on his off-season training per Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK News. Willander broke into a routine NHL role this season and finished the year with 21 points in 70 games.
Even with a young roster and rejections from some potential difference-makers, the Swedes will still enter the 2026 World Championship as favorites to earn a medal. Their top competition will be Team USA, Canada, Finland, and Czechia – as has become the case in recent years.
Flyers Sign Jack Berglund To Entry-Level Deal
The Flyers announced Thursday that they’ve signed center prospect Jack Berglund to his entry-level contract. Financial terms were not disclosed. It’s a three-year pact that will begin next season, but he’s signed on with AHL Lehigh Valley on an amateur tryout to finish the 2025-26 campaign in North America. He had been playing in his native Sweden with Färjestad BK of the Swedish Hockey League.
Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff reported Tuesday that the Flyers were at least trying to get Berglund over to Lehigh Valley for the stretch run. Berglund, who turns 20 tomorrow, still has another year left on his contract with Färjestad. As a non-first-round pick under 24, the NHL’s transfer agreement with Sweden’s leagues stipulated that the Flyers would have to loan Berglund back to Färjestad next season if he didn’t make the team out of camp, unless Färjestad consented to Berglund staying in North America with Lehigh Valley.
The 6’4″, 209-lb pivot is coming off a season he won’t soon forget. Selected 51st overall by Philly in the 2024 draft, the physical, two-way-minded centerman excelled for the Swedes as their captain in what will be his first and only performance at the World Juniors. He posted three goals and seven assists for 10 points in seven games, including a tournament-high +9 rating, as Sweden marched to its first WJC gold medal since 2012.
In league play, Berglund’s offensive output was more measured. In 40 games with Färjestad, serving mostly as a fourth-line piece with some penalty-kill time, he had seven goals and five assists for 12 points with an even rating. That’s to be expected, especially for a player essentially skating in his first full season at the pro level. He split last year between Färjestad’s main club and its under-20 unit.
There’s a lot to like about Berglund’s defensive game, writes Scott Wheeler of The Athletic, who ranks him as the #9 prospect in Philly’s pool. He’s a good forechecker, especially around the perimeter, but it’s likely his subpar skating will limit his utility outside of a bottom-six role. Outside of that, there’s a highly projectable talent in Berglund that the Flyers will now get to see in the North American circuit for the first time as Lehigh Valley fights to stay in the playoff race, trailing Springfield by four points with five regular-season games remaining for the final playoff spot in the Atlantic Division.
Berglund will be up for restricted free agency in 2029. With Philly’s current bottom-six centers, Noah Cates and Sean Couturier, locked up through 2029 and 2030, respectively, there won’t be any rushing Berglund’s development. He may not get a real NHL shot until his second contract, or at least until the end of his entry-level deal, with so many Flyers forwards either signed through the end of the decade or soon-to-be RFAs projectable as long-term top-nine talents.
East Notes: Maple Leafs, Mehlenbacher, Berglund
Tonight’s game was a tough one for the Maple Leafs. The team announced (Twitter links) that goaltender Anthony Stolarz (lower body), defenseman Brandon Carlo (lower body), and forward Dakota Joshua (upper body) all exited their game against Washington due to injuries.
Stolarz went down just 2:34 into the game after extending to make a save and dropped to the ice in pain. He was helped off and couldn’t put any weight on his leg while Joseph Woll took over for the rest of the game. Carlo made it through two periods, playing into the final minute of the second but didn’t come out for the third while Joshua was injured on a hit from Rasmus Sandin in the back half of the middle frame. The Maple Leafs have a quick turnaround as they’re set to play against the Islanders on Thursday; it wouldn’t be surprising to see several recalls before that contest. One of those will be netminder Artur Akhtyamov as TSN’s Mark Masters relays (Twitter link) that the youngster will be brought up and make his NHL debut against New York.
Elsewhere in the East:
- Red Wings prospect Owen Mehlenbacher is entering the NCAA transfer portal, reports Mark Divver of the New England Hockey Journal (Twitter link). The 22-year-old center was a seventh-round pick by Detroit back in 2022 and has played three college seasons so far. The first two were spent at Wisconsin where he managed 10 points in 51 combined games. This season, Mehlenbacher played at UMass after going through the portal last offseason, tallying three goals and six assists in 32 appearances. At this point, it seems unlikely that Detroit would want to sign Mehlenbacher based on how things have gone so far so he’ll be banking on finding a landing spot where he can have a big senior season.
- The Flyers are attempting to bring prospect Jack Berglund to North America to get him some action with AHL Lehigh Valley, relays Anthony DiMarco of Daily Faceoff. The 19-year-old forward was a second-round pick back in 2024, going 51st overall. Berglund had seven goals and five assists in 40 games with SHL Farjestad this season and has another year under contract with them. Kevin Kurz of The Athletic adds (Twitter link) that Philadelphia would like to have Berglund in training camp with them next season which suggests they intend to sign him to an entry-level deal for next season.