from Max Bultman of The Athletic,

ÄNGELHOLM, Sweden — Marco Kasper is early, because of course he is.

It’s a few minutes before 4 p.m., and inside the local Espresso House — the Nordic Starbucks — Kasper is already seated near a towering potted plant and a window. The Red Wings’ 2022 first-round pick is here to meet a visitor from the other side of the world, to talk about his season and himself. He also needs to find a moment to eat — with him are a carton of overnight oats and a bottle of lemonade.

“Didn’t get too much lunch today,” Kasper says, “because I had to practice, school, back to practice.”

The second practice isn’t an everyday occurrence, but otherwise, that’s life right now for Detroit’s precocious young center prospect: go, go, go. He’s a professional athlete here in Ängelholm, a small, hockey-loving city in Southwest Sweden, but he’s still going to school anyway — both because he wants to finish his education and because, in Kasper’s words, “to think about something else sometimes is also good.”

If that perspective seems unusually sage for an 18-year-old, well, that’s Kasper: Teammates call him mature beyond his years, and his on-ice play backs it up.

Just months after shedding the cage on his helmet, the tell-tale mark of a junior player, Kasper is among Rögle’s most relied-upon forwards in the SHL. In addition to his 19 points in 38 games — the most among all U20 players in the league — he’s a plus-12, which leads the team.

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