Wennerholm: I probably wasn’t so curious before
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It was in the shadow of the hockey game that Sam Hallam began his journey towards his first championship.
Two straight victories over Denmark, 4-2 and 3-0, for a prototype WC team.
But the big question is how many are left when the water cycle begins in a month.
The lower the answer, the better.
I’ve probably never been so curious about a potential toilet team as this time around.
Especially since the sentiment is that some of the NHL’s biggest Swedes are World Cup-hungry, including two-hundred all-time leading scorers at linebacker Erik Karlsson and Vancouver’s Elias Peterson.
Yes, five of the top ten Swedish League scoring players miss the Stanley Cup and they are immediately available.
Rasmus Dahlin of Buffalo, Elias Lindholm of Calgary, and Ricard Raquel of Pittsburgh are the others.
Calgary also includes center backs Mikael Backlund, who had one of his best seasons, and Rasmus Andersson, who finished third in the Swedish league behind Karlsson and Dalen.
Hallam has time to wait
Add Nashville’s Philip Forsberg, Detroit’s Lucas Raymond, Buffalo’s Viktor Olofsson, Anaheim’s Jacob Silverberg and goaltender Jacob Markstrom, and there’s already a large pool of potential World Cup players to look out for Hallam and his staff.
But if Erik Carlson and Elias Peterson take a ride on a toilet train, that’s a great start.
With two such heavyweight names, others will follow.
content.
It usually has this effect.
Now Sam Hallam has time to wait out the entire first play-off round and other Swedish stars.
It will be confusing as always, there will be a streak of ungratefulness – as always – and we will only see the result when WC gets going.
But the story is clear for Sweden.
It is Sweden’s NHL reinforcements that have been behind all of Sweden’s WC gold since 1987.
Now I don’t know how Sam Hallam thinks.
Balancing process for each national team captain
Rikard Grönborg, captain of the national team that captured the Swedes’ last two World Cup gold medals in 2017 and 2018, has gone home with basically every NHL player before him.
He set a record for the number of NHL draftees in Sweden’s World Cup squad in both 2017 and 2018, and with hindsight it’s fair to give him the right.
Sam Hallam has spoken of having a core group of players from Europe, from the team he has used in three successful Euro Hockey tournaments.
Sweden won all three.
But he did not mention. a number
I understand him.
It’s a balancing act for every national team captain who has been introduced to a number of loyal national team players over an entire season and then had to sack them on the eve of the World Cup.
And with all the perks the NHL usually offers, it’s often the top of the hierarchy among the Swedes in Europe who usually make the move.
What remains are usually those in purely defensive roles, like Färjestad’s Linus Johansson, who was named the best Swede this evening.
At the same time, Finland has shown that it is possible to get ahead with a home toilet team, but the feeling is that it is the strict discipline that brings success more than the players.
But the next few weeks will be as crucial to Sam Hallam as the water cycle itself.
Learn to look completely different on May 22nd
With maximum results and players like Erik Carlsson and Elias Peterson, there will be hockey fever from the start.
Otherwise, the situation will be more tepid, especially after three consecutive editions of the World Cup finals, where the Swedish national team did not reach further than the quarter-finals, and even missed the quarter-finals for the first time ever in Riga 2021.
The countdown to the World Cup has begun with two international matches away to Denmark on Wednesday and Thursday.
Thursday night had a close first period, before Marcus Silvegaard broke the deadlock in the second half and Anton Bengson hit a rebound to make it 2-0 at the end of the middle.
In the third, Patrick Karlqvist increased it to 3-0 with a commanding lead in front of goal.
It felt like a day at work for most people.
The next time Tre Kronor will meet Denmark will be in the penultimate match of the World Cup group stage on 22 May.
Then it will look completely different.