When the Detroit Red Wings started the regular season, the back-end was extremely depleted, so the team fielded a group of young, inexperienced defensemen. You could say players like Libor Sulak, Joe Hicketts, Filip Hronek and Dennis Cholowski were all unexpected players that started the season on the roster but with all the injuries that had occurred early on it was sort of expected.
Christoffer Ehn, on the other hand, was not an expected roster addition for the Wings. He was supposed to be in Grand Rapids helping the Griffins, yet he found his way to Detroit with a strong training camp and preseason.