New season begins

A new season has begun and it looks to be one dominated by youth. The NHLers are back in North America and some of the youngsters who did not get a chance to play last year are itching to show what they can do. Last night we saw a young group hit the ice;
Defensman Richard Demén-Willaume
RW Kirill Starkov
CE Sebastian Karlsson
LW Anton Axelsson

This line, the ask line let's call it, looked good. Fast with a bit of punch. Anton Axelsson might actually turn out to be better than his brother PJ Axelsson, he looks agressive and fast with a two-way style of play, he made an excellent defensive play last night and remained on the ice when the coach reduced the shifts from four lines to three. He holds great promise. So does Sebastian Karlsson and Kirill Starkov. Starkov was drafted by Columbus and he may get a chance to play in the NHL, he looked to be highly skilled. Sebastian Karlsson served his first penalty and dished out some punishment.

Richard Demén-Willaume looked very solid, he made some good plays and appeared to be quite confident despite it being the home opener. He needs to be more punishing along the boards, like Oduya was.

Mora played well, I hope and think they will stay in the league this year. Their goalie let them down in the last period, otherwise they played well.

Three stars - Niklas Andersson
Two stars - Tommy Salo
one star - Tomi Kallio

Swedish Referees get the eyeball

The Swedish referee Ulf Rönnmark, who has a job with a gambling concern, is upset that he cannot report to work as usual and referee a professional hockey match. He thinks it a "strange situation" that he is under review.

This is incredible. How can it appear strange when the referre has a direct effect on the game and presumably has a financial stake in the outcome? This is a true conflict of interest and a shocking lack of ethics. Doesn't it say somewhere in the contract the referees sign that they cannot gamble on the game nor work for a company that profits from gambling? Just the simplest of precautions would have prevented this.

Belatedly the Swedish hockey league is looking into the matter and checking all the referees. If I were a coach I would look at game tape closely to make a case that they are all corrupt, you might be right.

Gambling and Hockey in Sweden

It has always been a bit remarkable that gambling has had such a prominent place in the Swedish sports market. Ads for the gambling monopoly, Svenska Spel, owned by the government, are everywhere. Svenska Spel supports the national football team and is a major sponsor of the Elitserien. You can see how this might be a conflict of interest at best, and an opportunity for some serious graft at worst.

Well here is some more for you to chew on. A referree from the Elitserien is now a paid employee of a foreign gambling company. Not only is he working for a competitor to the Swedish government and its monopoly, he is working for a competitor to his boss! Furthermore, this is a man who can directly control the outcome of games, has a direct line to the odds makers, and obviously serves no interests but his own.

How can this sorry state of affairs continue? Easily. There are so many regulations and so many regulatory bodies that no one can do anything about this. He can probably not get fired, that is hard to do in Scandinavia.

What an embarassment. I strongly advise anyone thinking about gambling on the outcome of Swedish hockey games to check and see if Ulf Rönnmark is the referee. If so, ask him who he put his money on. And I say to Swedish Hockey, get your act together. Do not allow gambling in hockey, it destroys the integretiy of the sport.

Pre-season round up - Stockholm is sinking version

Stockholm is Sweden's capital city. They think quite highly of themselves of course and when they lose to their rival Gothenburg it can be a painful event. One of the teams there, Djurgården, has been a powerhouse for years. It has had great players and coaches, even one who was credited with new strategies for an old game, (the torpedo offense.) RIght now Djurgården is on a bit of a high, their football team is in first place and they just gave a good beating to the Gothenburg team IFK last week. But when it comes to hockey, Djurgården has fallen on tough times.

Apparently, according to the Swedish press, Djurgården is in a bit of a financial crisis and has had to cut back severly on players salaries. This means that this year, instead of seeing people like Jose Theodore, they will see some kids fresh up from the farm leagues. Some are saying they may even fall out of the elitserien because their team is so bad. That seems like a stretch, even so this is something of a shocking development for what has been a consistenly good club that has won the championship as recently as 2001.

Djurgården spent too much money last year on locked+out NHL players and failed to attract the fans. They played well in the playoffs, beating Modo to advance. But they ran into a very good Frölunda team and though they fought, they lost to a better goaltender and a more disciplined team. That also cost them playoff revenue. It is a shocking development that a team with the most number of championships (6, the same number as Färjestad) and based in the capital of a great hockey nation, would lose its flagship franchise.

Swedish Hockey teams web sites in English

Amazingly enough, many of the Swedish teams do not have information English. I think the marketing gene is left out of the Swedish DNA, although they have very funny commercials. I will try to list all the links to English content on this blog, and hopefully press some of the teams to do a little better for those of us whose mother tongue is not Swedish.

Moose

One of the main reasons for my love of hockey is Mark Messier. When he promised that we would win game six against the Devils in 1994, (I lived in New York City at the time,) I thought that was a bold and foolhardy prediction. New Yorkers know about boasts, and if you do not deliver you never live it down. The Rangers won the game, the series and the Stanley Cup, on the back of Messier. He is officially retiring after 25 years in the NHL.

We'll miss you Moose.