Define senior team. I did. A senior NT is team with NO age restrction. A 17 year old can play on it. Nowhere it is stated how many players on it should be how old(except for the obvious like a 15 year old would probably be too young indeed). A U20 team IS a senior team then. They are all 18 and older. We are also not talking about language. Language can be misleading. And it's only names, not the substaance of the matter. For example it is only a junior team in English, just like the WJC is a junior championship in English. In Russian only the U18 teams and championships are called "junior". The U20 team is called differently "youth"(also applies to the championships. It's МЧМ vs. ЮЧМ), meaning they are not juniors, but rather young adults by that time, which is not that far out as they are even legally that, right? Again, that's just language intricacies. What matters is, they might be young, they might be the complete squad for the upcoming WJC, but this is completely irrelevant here. They are by all means eligible to be the senior NT. Explicitly. Again, what are the criteria? Age? What age? There is no average age or something requirement. Best team available? Obviously not. Are the finnish, swedish, czech teams the best rosters available? No. They are older. But that's what senior NTs are, different in average age as there is no restriction. You feel like you send a team of 40y.o.? Fine. 19 year olds? Just as good.
What? And if Bragin was coaching them, they would be the senior team? Good to know. Next time we just send Bragin along with 14 year olds and it is a senior team. Seriously, if Sweden decided to send ABBA as their coaching staff, I couldn't care less and would not deduct anything from that.
Apparently a
small number of posters here from Finnland and Sweden are very much invested into this tournament as they are quite adamant about their concerns regarding rosters.