Olympics: Worst Swedish team since best on best Olympics?

[RED ARMY EAST]

Wow, this thread is so pessimistic. And after an olympic final aswell
Im abit worried though that since many kids today end up playing football instead of hockey. And since the economy in this country is down the drain and totally **** maybe parents does not have the funds to support their kid to play hockey. Its expensive.

There are now more kids playing soccer (football) in Canada, than hockey.It's an expensive sport if a kid is going to play competitive hockey in Canada as well.
Many families are turning away from hockey for less expensive sports.
By the way, they were calling for another summit to find out what is wrong with Canadian hockey, due to the lack of gold medal results in recent World Junior Championships.
I think hockey is fine in Sweden, Olympic silver and World Championship gold in senior and junior last year!

 

[Fataldogg]

3 best centers missing.

Still had best goalie and best defender.

Sweden finished where I expected them to due to the circumstances.

This. When you look at that, they should be happy with a silver. Their goaltender and defensive core played great. But, they couldn't overcome missing their three best centers.

They're not like Canada, where if Crosby, Toews and Getzlaf were missing, they could go to Tavares, Duchene, Thornton, Giroux, etc.

There just isn't that level of depth there. Expecting them to win the Gold with players like Mojo/Kruger getting the ice time they got, against players like Crosby/Toews/Getzlaf was unrealistic. Zetterberg/H.Sedin/Backstrom is a much more competitive line up to match against.

 

[jfc64]

Looking back on this tournament and the Swedish roster this must have been the weakest team I can remember. Even the 94 team had more edge to it and im not talking about Forsberg who was still in SEL.

Winning a silver medal was beyond my expectations and the only way Sweden could have done any resistance in the final was if we had a full or nearly full team. Canada was so much better and a swedish team without any edge was just a snack for them.

Replacing Nyquist, Johansson, Silfverberg and Tallinder plus someone else with Zetterberg, Henrik Sedin, Bäckström, Franzén and Victor Hedman would have helped...

 

[Pominville Knows]

Looking back on this tournament and the Swedish roster this must have been the weakest team I can remember. Even the 94 team had more edge to it and im not talking about Forsberg who was still in SEL.

Why do you not count Forsberg, considering almost if not all of the team was from the SHL?

 

[modofan]

Yes it was.

 

[Hot Water Bottle]

There are now more kids playing soccer (football) in Canada, than hockey.It's an expensive sport if a kid is going to play competitive hockey in Canada as well.
Many families are turning away from hockey for less expensive sports.

I thought the whole point of hockey was that poor trash hicks could have a career. There's no way that every WCHL goon out there is a rich kid.

That's interesting though if it really is going back to being a rich kid's sport, like it was in the early days (run by people like Lord Stanley, Lady Byng, etc.)

 

[TonsofPuppies*]

The 2010 team was quite comfortably worse than this.

What kind of moron brings Magnus Johansson and Mattias Weinhandl to a tournament played on small ice, oh, that's right, Bengt-Ã…ke Gustafsson.

And then add half-injured, over-the-hill Modin to that.

Agreed. This Swedish team made it much further, obviously, and they did it with a number of injuries to some of their best players.

 

[tony d]

Maybe on paper it was but this Team Sweden was pretty good especially when you consider all the injuries they had.

 

[joe89]

Without the centers, yep.

But our depth guys were the best, arguably ever imo. Young, fast and smart. That's why we survived.

 

[MissingNo]

2010 the worst. 2002 and 2006 the best.

I've probably never seen Sweden play as good as they did in 2002 before their loss to Belarus