Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Sweden Announces Olympic Hockey Team

On Tuesday, the Swedish Hockey Federation announced who they will be sending to South Korea for the Winter Olympics and there are quite a few recognizable names on this list, which has me leaning towards the Swedes as the early favourites for gold, before seeing the remaining teams.  They would be my favourite of the four teams to be revealed, thus far.

Goaltending is such a strength for the Swedes, as they have a couple of goalies that has had plenty of NHL experience and another that is up-and-coming for the Rangers (Hellberg), as he waits for his chance in Europe.  If they decide on either Enroth of Fasth as their number one guy, either way, they are getting plenty of experience there. 

17 of the 23 players on their roster have been drafted by an NHL team and the Swedes have also included 17-year old prospect Rasmus Dahlin, who is expected to be the 1st overall pick in this June's draft, but that's long after the Olympic tournament is over.  Dahlin impressed at the World Juniors over the holidays and he could be a real spark plug for this team offensively, which is going to be exciting to watch.

I would imagine that the Swedes are going to be a very good team to pick from this year and they'll go fast.

Player Name POS
Jhonas Enroth G
Viktor Fasth G
Magnus Hellberg G
Dick Axelsson F
Alexander Bergstrom F
Dennis Everberg F
Carl Klingberg F
Anton Lander F
Par Lindholm F
Joakim Lindstrom F
Joel Lundqvist F
Oscar Moller F
Linus Omark F
Fredrik Pettersson F
Viktor Stalberg F
Jonas Ahnelov D
Simon Bertilsson D
Rasmus Dahlin D
Johan Fransson D
Erik Gustafsson D
Patrik Hersley D
Staffan Kronwall D
Mikael Wikstrand D

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