This time we have more time to prepare, not just a few days. Club pairings are not crucial, I believe.
Can we use Erik Karlsson as a PP specialist and use bigger players on the rolling pairs? We have not had this big of a team before, I think:
Sedin - Sedin - Zetterberg
Landeskog - Berglund - Ericsson
Steen - Bäckström - Hörnqvist
Eriksson - Söderberg - Franzén
Lindholm
Hedman - Brodin
Kronwall - Ericsson
Hjalmarsson - Grossmann
Edler - Ekman-Larsson
Karlsson (Erik)
Lundqvist / Enroth / Lehner
Berglund and Ericsson over Forsberg, Nyquist and Burakovsky etc? Maybe if Berglund would have played like he did a couple of years ago, but his career has gone down the hill.
The line formations also fells weird to me, I dont think Zetterberg will work very well with the sedins. sedins build their game around letting the puck go fast and also looking for the empty space. Zetterberg is a puck possessions guy that likes to hold on to the puck a lot. I don´t see how that is a good match. Sure Zetterberg can probabaly adapt, but then we will hold back Zetterberg from playing his game, and should you do that? He is probably our best forward in 5v5.
You maybe missed that EK was way more than just a PP-specialist in the olympics, he wasnt in on one single goal against us, while his d-pair was the only one that put up a significant amount of pressure offensvily. It was pretty much thanks to EK alone that we made to the final, and him you want as a 9 th d-man? Do we even get to have so many players in the tournament?
Kronwall and Ericsson had big problems in that tournament. Didnt produce much offensively, and I dont just refer to points, they didnt created much offensive pressure and was in on most of the goals against us. Im not so high on them after that tournament, maybe Kronwall play style fits better on small ice, but he was not good in the olympics.