New Swiss super duo Nico Hischer and Kevin Fiala netted the equivalent of SEK 150 million last winter.
This is more than all Swedish NHL players in the World Cup combined.
Suddenly, the Swiss national team dominated the salary league at the World Cup.
In the IIHF’s new power rankings, Switzerland also ranks first after four straight victories, ahead of the USA and Canada.
Sweden?
In fourth place, despite the strong start to the championship.
Defending champions Finland have dropped to a worrying but deserved sixth place after their sluggish start to the World Cup.
He has the super WC series
But the fact that Switzerland sailed as one of the favorites for gold is understandable.
They’ve got the entire real WC supervillain series in Nico Hischier, Kevin Fiala, and Denis Malgin.
In a WC where they have historically been rare among the stars, the Swiss stand out with their brilliance.
Nico Hischer became the first Swiss ever to be ranked number one in the NHL draft (2017) and is one of the main reasons the New Jersey Devils came out.
Scored 80 points (31+49) in 81 games this winter.
Very cheap troops
Familiar with Sweden, Kevin Fiala – still fluent in Swedish after just 2.5 seasons in Sweden – is also one of the biggest NHL stars today.
He’s averaged over a point per game the past two seasons and last winter he scored 72 points (23+49) in 69 games with the Los Angeles Kings.
Now they face the World Cup where they stand second and third in the pay league behind Finland’s Mikko Rantanen.
Rantanen is the highest paid player at $9,250,000 — nearly 100 million kroner — per season for the Colorado Avalanche.
But they are exceptions that prove the rule.
This is a low-budget World Cup and it doesn’t just apply to Sweden.
Even the USA and Canada have very cheap teams compared to the NHL’s salary league.
It’s a combination of no thanks and very expensive insurance.
The golden years were losses
It was not only Sweden that had to contend with exorbitant insurance costs, forcing them to reject Elias Petersson at an early stage.
It is a cost that has risen sharply in recent years.
We can compare with the Swedish Golden Team in Copenhagen 2018, where 21 Swedes from the NHL were on the team at the end.
Their combined salary in the NHL that winter was $78 million – the equivalent of 825 million SEK at today’s dollar exchange rate.
No team in this year’s World Cup comes close to that amount and the question is whether we will see such a brimming Swedish side win the national football championship again, without the federation being forced into bankruptcy.
In the Swedish golden years of 2017 and -18, WC was a losing act for the Swedish Confederation, although gold awarded a victory prize equivalent to 10 million.
But the Swede ranks in the top ten for the World Cup in this tournament as well.
Team captain Jacob Silverberg, the sixth-place finisher with an annual salary of $5,250,000 (55 million kroner) is from Anaheim.
This gives the joint sixth position.