1. Luleå 2021-22
2. Luleå 2000-01
3. Luleå 2019-20
2000-01 is nostalgic for me as a fan, I went to a ton of home games and cheered the team from the standing section. Very few teams beat us at home. Mikael Renberg had returned after a few banged up seasons lately in the NHL and seemed to thrive under the less hectic SEL schedule: he was brilliant. We had a few exciting young names of the future in, mixed in with former champions and loyal team legends. Just a fun time to look back on, unfortunately a tier below Djurgården’s torpedo team and Färjestad’s water-skiing one.
2019-2020 was a great ride, very cohesive group playing an attractive possession game that won the regular season in a pretty dominant fashion. I had to that point never felt so confident in a Luleå team heading into the playoffs — which was canceled due to covid. Not sure if it’s the third best or all-time worst season for me as a fan: fun while it lasted, but to hell with it.
The next season was a bit of a roller-coaster, Luleå probably could have made some moves to improve the team further with the uncertainties of the NHL season during the pandemic, but instead opted to sit back on the roster we had. Continued pretty much were we’d left off the year before, but other teams began to deconstruct our system in a very painful way after new year’s. Skellefteå made some great additions before the transfer deadline, and it was just our typical luck we were going to have to face them in the quarterfinals, in the off-year following a really great one, but we gave them a run for their money, dragged the series out to a game 7 and if not for our goalie Lassinantti missing a key game with migraines, I’m confident we could have pocketed a glorious upset.
But the following season, 2021-22, was the ride of my life as a fan.
Luleå had used its financial resources conservatively during the no-attendance covid season, but the following off-season was ripe with awesome and interesting adds: above all, the return of Linus Omark.
After a slow start, Luleå began rolling. We found the fit for Omark in Pontus Andreasson’s snipes and Tyrväinen’s grit in front of the net.
Wallstedt came into his own as an SHL starter, whereas Lassinantti had a shaky start which he improved on immensely, giving us arguably the best tandem in the league.
The d-corps was improved upon with “old, end of the road Sami Lepistö”… who was absolutely brilliant. Erik Gustafsson, Lepistö, Honka, Engsund, they were as good a top four as they come in the SHL.
I even prayed for a playoff lineup to the championship games of QF: Växjö, SF: Frölunda, Finals: Skellefteå, just to make our road to our first championship in 26 years one of a series of triumphs over the banes of our existence over the last decade.
At least we got one out of three. We edged out a frustrating, tight boxing Örebro with the near-unbeatable Enroth in net, over 5 games. We got a gritty, closer-than-it-seemed-from-afar Frölunda revenge run in the semifinals, where Ryan Lasch and Elmer Söderlund the tall lanky skilled Wings prospect were made into perimeter losers. Erik Gustafsson and Oscar Engsund played godlike shutdown defense in front of a brilliant Lassinantti to bail us out of a crucial game 4 where all forwards seemed unable to keep the puck within the team or get anything going forward.
And then we surprisingly, considering how woefully inept they’d been the first half of the season, received Färjestad in the finals, who’d shocked every seeded opponent on their road to the finals. Of course we lost, but not before giving me the best live hockey experience in-attendance, the resurrection of Einar Emanuelsson who followed up an inexplicable single goal regular season with five tallies in the championship finals series, including the OT game winner when Färjestad came back from being behind 4-1 in game 3 which I’d flown home to see. Maaaaan was I ever on top of the world.
Eventually there’s game 7. Two periods of dominant play, two or three posts and no goal… Of course we’d lose and I’m heartbroken for life, barely able to enjoy hockey since, and every game night I pray that Theodor Lennström, hockey’s most punchable face, will soil himself on the ice mid-game, burst into tears crying for mommy to pick him up as the crowd laughs at him, and subsequently retires from hockey due to the utter humiliation.
