Swedish media: Finland has surpassed Sweden in hockey

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Star Ocean

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Dec 30, 2018
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Not looking good for sweden right now. Finland has 10k more licensed players than sweden. More NHL stars, more golds at junior level.

Even swedish media is recognizing it as a problem.

It is because too many young males play f***ing soccer. I hate soccer, because we will never be good at that sport, so I want all resources for hockey, but it will never happen. :(
 

BalticWarrior

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Apr 28, 2012
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Not looking good for sweden right now. Finland has 10k more licensed players than sweden. More NHL stars, more golds at junior level.

Even swedish media is recognizing it as a problem.

It is because too many young males play ****ing soccer. I hate soccer, because we will never be good at that sport, so I want all resources for hockey, but it will never happen. :(

What? In what universe?
 
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DannyGallivan

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Aug 25, 2017
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Not looking good for sweden right now. Finland has 10k more licensed players than sweden. More NHL stars, more golds at junior level.

Even swedish media is recognizing it as a problem.

It is because too many young males play ****ing soccer. I hate soccer, because we will never be good at that sport, so I want all resources for hockey, but it will never happen. :(
Gotta agree.
 

BalticWarrior

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Apr 28, 2012
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Barkov, aho, laine, rantanen, (soon kakko). Our only young stars are dahlin and pettersson.

The rest of star swedes in NHL are aging. Hedman, karlsson backstrom.

You still have way more NHL stars overall not to mention all it takes is one good draft year for Sweden to pull off again.
 

Jakk123

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May 6, 2014
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How exactly are things looking "not good" for Sweden? Number of licensed players means jack sh*t. Both Sweden and Finland had 4 players in top50 of NHL point totals this season. Sweden still tends to do slightly better at the NHL draft, they have 2-times more NHL players. Finland is doing really great, but I just don't see how did they surpass Sweden in terms of producing talent.
 
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Star Ocean

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Dec 30, 2018
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"Swedish media"

You mean all click-bait journalists (Wennerholm, Ros, Nyström etc.). After last WC we were THE powerhouse hockey nation according to the same people.
Well they got a point. Finland has leaped frog us in liscensed players in a 10 year span, and they dont spend resources on soccer like sweden do. The youth in finland most likely will choose hockey thanks to their culture and recent success.
 

Jussi

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Feb 28, 2002
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Not looking good for sweden right now. Finland has 10k more licensed players than sweden. More NHL stars, more golds at junior level.

Even swedish media is recognizing it as a problem.

It is because too many young males play ****ing soccer. I hate soccer, because we will never be good at that sport, so I want all resources for hockey, but it will never happen. :(

Sweden doesn't include rec players in that number.
 
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Erikfromfin

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May 18, 2013
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Nothing new for me personally called Finland surpassing Sweden some 6 years ago already
 

VictorLustig

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Feb 8, 2012
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Well they got a point. Finland has leaped frog us in liscensed players in a 10 year span, and they dont spend resources on soccer like sweden do. The youth in finland most likely will choose hockey thanks to their culture and recent success.

From 96-01 we had extremely small age groups, 40% smaller than in the early 90's. Birth-rate hasn't been lower since the 1930's. That's a big factor here. Still we have around 25-30(?) players drafted each year, a 1st overall pick and plenty of top 10 picks from players born during those years. If you generate depth you will eventually produce elite players. We have a stronger top league and a much stronger second league, way more NHL players, 3 recent WC wins, strong teams every year at the WJC, better results in best-on-best tournaments etc. We are fine.
 
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Esko6

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Sep 14, 2004
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This is dumb. Sweden will get a 1-2 in Calder voting, they have insane defence and players like Holtz and Raymond coming. They probably wrote this just to troll finns.
 
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Arselona

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Nov 9, 2007
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Meh. Finland had a period where they hardly produced any top level NHL talent. Now they do, and the diff is more like in late 90s/early 00s with Selanne, Koivu, Numminen, Timonen etc. vs Forsberg , Sundin, Lidstrom etc. Sweden's still clearly ahead but not by as much as 10-20 years ago when only goalies were coming out of Finnish hockey program.
 
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canswetoxic

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Dec 29, 2015
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How exactly are things looking "not good" for Sweden? Number of licensed players means jack sh*t. Both Sweden and Finland had 4 players in top50 of NHL point totals this season. Sweden still tends to do slightly better at the NHL draft, they have 2-times more NHL players. Finland is doing really great, but I just don't see how did they surpass Sweden in terms of producing talent.

Number of licensed players does not mean all of them gonna be star players.
 

AustonsNostrils

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Apr 5, 2016
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There are only 2 countries on earth where hockey is the undisputed top sport - Canada and Finland. I expect Finland to continue on its roll.
 
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Ippenator

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Jan 6, 2016
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Finland might have caught up with Sweden in some ways and maybe even surpassed you guys in some areas in hockey, but altogether Sweden is still ahead.

Sweden has more of clear NHL class players. Also the Swedish defencemen are altogether quite clearly better, although it seems that the Finns might be catching up gradually. But anyway the difference is quite clear at the moment.

Sweden has also more of the clear NHL class goalies, but with the top goalies I think it is pretty even between the Swedes and the Finns.

The only areas that Finland already beats the Swedes with are the coaching and the top end forwards. I’m pretty sure that Jalonen beats any Swedish coach that is in the pipeline at the moment, and his upcoming adjutants, Pennanen and Manner, are extremely talented and smart coaches. Especially Pennanen seems like a younger and maybe even more efficient version of Jalonen. An extremely promising top class coach in the pipeline.

It was said already that both, Pennanen and Manner had as the assisting coaches already in this WHC tournament an important role in making the Finnish system work as well as it eventually did. Of course Jalonen was the main man, but he also used his assisting guys efficiently as very good help, and got also some nice finishing touch to his ideas of the best working system from these assisting young promising coaches.

Also Finland has better top forwards than Sweden already, but I’m not sure if the difference is really that big after all. And with you guys having already kids like Raymond and Holtz in the pipeline, it could be even you having the advantage again quite soon with your forwards. Of course Finland does have also very promising young forwards like Lundell and Räty, but honestly they were that much weaker than Raymond and Holtz in the U18 WHC tournament, that at least right now it looks quite much better for Sweden, with that age group’s forwards.

Oh, and you Swedish lucky bastards have Pettersson, whom I see as the most talented Nordic player at the moment. He is also one of (if not THE) the most talented players in the world. The guy has insane hockey IQ and hands, and he has even a crazy shot! And he is already so bloody good, while he is clearly a completely physically raw player. What the hell will he become when he gets clearly more strength and even more of explosiveness? He is a Nordic talent that might be surpassed only by Raymond during the upcoming years.
 
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