Denver. The Stanley Cup Final, which begins Thursday night, isn’t just a dream come true because it’s finally two true superpowers facing each other.
It also features the most exciting Swedish of the match in over 30 years.
Not since Håkan Loob and Mats Näslund snatched up classic duels in the ’80s that two heavyweights in blue and yellow like Gabriel Landeskog and Victor Hedman met in hockey’s holiest battle.
In the end, there have been no big bangs this year. No teams skip the queue nor are they allowed to play finals although they really shouldn’t, no enthusiastic goalkeepers specializing in heavy scrutiny have stolen enough big matches to spoil the party for the most deserving fighters – and no ‘moral finals’ have been set advance.
The two teams that are still holding out when the 2021-2022 hockey season reaches its final climax are the one-time bests; Those with the most complete player teams, the most advanced game ideas – and in some rivalries with Edmonton, Toronto and Florida – the coolest stars.
Therefore, the adventure that begins at the Ball Arena in Denver Thursday night has the potential to be the most exciting during the entire payroll that began in the fall of 2005.
Especially from a Swedish perspective
But like I said, it’s special from a Swedish perspective too, because we have it in one corner of the ring Gabriel Landskog – In addition to Andrei Burakovsky – and in the other Victor Hedman And two of these great personalities from the kingdom haven’t clashed in the Stanley Cup Final in decades.
Yes, I’d argue you have to go back to 1986 and 1989, when the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary met in two all-Canadian finals — by the way, a touch of the concept that’s unimaginable today, by the way. Both times, Mats Neslund and Hakan Loeb were among the best on each team – and both won once.
Since then, we’ve had an unbelievable number of stars swinging at Lord Stanley’s glorious ball, but not two Vikings with equally strong luminosity on different sides of the red line.
This was, for example, before they reached the finals in the late ’90s Peter Forsberg and duo Nicklas Liedstrom and Thomas Holmstrom had their classic deals. Once their team – the Colorado Avalanches and the Detroit Red Wings – reached the final goal, the brilliance of the opposing team’s blue and yellow stars was much more modest (and in 2001, unfortunately, Peter could not stay with him at all, due to a destroyed spleen).
In Detroit in particular, it was also crowded with Swedish stars in the Super Finals against Pittsburgh in 2008 and 2009 – as well as Liedstrom and Holmstrom, Henrik Zitterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Johan Franzen, Mikael Samuelsson, Andreas Lilga and Jonathan Eriksson. In the red and white lines. years – but the opponent actually had absolutely nothing.
Hedman vs. Landeskog is a bit bigger
It was the same in 2011, when the Seiden brothers made it to the only final. Around that small island, there was an unusual amount of “noise” in the mother country, but it was only because of the Vancouver twins. The Bruins were completely abandoned on the Swedish elements.
Henrik Lundqvist Spring 2014? No, he has not met any Los Angeles native.
Ulf Samuelsson vs Ulf Dahlin 1991 was a great game, and so was Frederic Modine vs Marcus Nilsson 2004, Daniel Alfredsson vs Samuel Paulson 2007, Niklas Backstrom and William Carlson 2018 – and twice before, in 2015 and 2020 respectively, Victor Hedmann faced other star defenders speaking the same. language, they are Niklas Hillelmarson and John Klingberg.
But Hedman vs. Landeskog – that’s another thing. It’s bigger. It’s as if “Le Petit Viking” and “Looooob” met on the NHL ice for the last time (literally after a somewhat perplexed Loob moved home after the 1989 Flame win, aged just 28).
It doesn’t get bad for gentlemen to be really good friends.
As Hedman stated after Tampa’s final win in the Conference Final against the New York Rangers on Saturday:
– I’ve never played such a big game against someone I was so close to.
Any Poles would try to comfort anyone when it’s time for a handshake… Well, at the time of writing I haven’t decided what I think.
Only one thing is for sure:
“Gabbe” and “Vigge” will be involved in most of the things that happen in, probably, the best Stanley Cup final of the modern era.
