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Malmö Redhawks

SHL Line-Ups: 20 September

by Matthew Smith 20/09/2024

written by Matthew Smith

We’re almost there! The 2024-25 Swedish Hockey League season gets going tomorrow with all 14 teams in action. Here are a few team notes from today.

Frölunda

There are two positive bits of news coming out of Gothenburg on the eve of the new season, just outweighing the bad.

The first is that the team has somewhere to play! Frölunda have been in dispute with their landlord, GotEvent, all summer regarding a new lease at the Scandinavium. The new lease was signed today so fears that their opener against Leksand might be postponed, which always seemed like a negotiating tactic rather than a likely endpoint, have been allayed.

The second is that goaltender Lasse Johansson has signed a two-year contract extension with the team. The 37-year old already had one year remaining, so this takes him through to the end of the 2026-27 season.

The bad news is that forward Gustav Rydahl will not be returning to action as soon as first hoped. Having undergone back surgery at the start of 2024, a pre-season game appearance over the previous weekend backed up the player’s own optimism that he might be ready for the SHL Opener.

That is not to be, as Head Coach Roger Rönnberg has confirmed that it will still be a few weeks before he is ready for competitive action. The English translation of his quote to GP is: “Nothing dramatic has happened. It takes time to get fresh after an operation like this. He was examined by specialists earlier this week – and received reassuring news from there. But it takes longer than he wants”.

Brynäs

The Hockey Gods also giveth and taketh away in Gävle.

Brynäs have confirmed today that defenseman Viktor Persson has signed a short-term contract with the team. He was brought in on trial over the pre-season period and has impressed enough to be given an initial seven-week contract.

The decision has been influenced by a lower-body injury to off-season signing Charle-Édouard D’Astous. Brynäs state that he is expected to be out for “two to five weeks”.

The other big loss in Brynäs is nothing to do with the playing squad. Fans will have to do without a ‘media cube’ (i.e. the big four-sided TV in the centre of the arena ceiling) for the time being. The team decided to invest in some improvements to Monitor ERP Arena after their promotion back to the SHL was confirmed; however the equipment has been held up on its ocean voyage from Asia and is unlikely to be operational until sometime in October.

Malmö

Malmö players and fans have come out fighting in response to them being the most frequently-predicted team to face the drop this season. The feeling from many is that they have more depth than others are giving them credit for.

That depth will be tested straight away as goaltender Marek Langhamer has been ruled out of the opening game against Skellefteå, with Daniel Marmenlind taking over between the pipes. Expressen are reporting that it may be the start of a longer lay-off, although the team’s official line currently is that it is a day-to-day issue.

Unfortunately, it’s definitely not a day-to-day issue affecting Thomas Berg Paulsen. The forward is currently sidelined and Head Coach Tomas Kollar confirmed to Expressen that it is possible he will be missing until mid-November.

20/09/2024 0 comments

SHL Line-Ups

SHL: 22 August

by Matthew Smith 22/08/2024

written by Matthew Smith

Plenty of updates for you today as quite a few SHL teams were playing pre-season training games on Thursday evening. As always, click on the team name heading to go to their respective team page where you can find the Line-Up chart.

Luleå

Luleå are stepping up their preparations with a couple of games against Finnish team Kärpät on Thursday and Friday. I’ve updated their Team Line-Up chart with the combinations they’ve gone with for this evening’s game.

Ahead of the first game, Assistant Coach Roger Kyrö has explained to NSD the two power play formations that they are planning to use. That’s excellent timing, as over the past few days I have been adding a new feature to the SHL Line-Up charts to record the main Power Play and Penalty Kill combinations that every team uses.

I was planning to leave them as placeholders until the competitive games began, with the exception of the three Champions Hockey League teams who I have updated based on how they lined up at the end of last season. As Luleå have kindly disclosed their plans nice and early, I thought I might as well add their details in now.

The Line-Up chart is embedded onto each team page, with tabs at the bottom that you can click to go to additional worksheets (e.g. change it to “PP PK” for those details). As always, these are a work-in-progress so let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Färjestad

Thomas Mitell’s team played a training game against Leksand on Thursday evening. I’ve updated both teams’ Line-up charts to reflect who was on the ice.

Recent NHL First Round pick Stian Solberg was partnered with Joel Nyström. Magnus Nygren and Adam Ollas Mattsson were not involved as Färjestad used just six defensemen. Damian Clara, like Solberg an Anaheim Ducks prospect, started between the pipes.

Leksand

As for Leksand, I was keen to see how Head Coach Charles Berglund might deploy the team’s two new defensemen, picked up as free agents from Timrå. The answer from the first main training game: Axel Rindell was paired with Alexander Lundqvist, and Joonas Lyytinen paired with Matt Caito.

Timrå

Timrå played a training game against Vaasan Sport on Thursday. Head Coach Olli Jokinen handed in a line-up with only 11 forwards, including two J20 players in Lukas Sagranden and Hugo Bergendal.

Malmö

Malmö played a training game against German side (and Champions Hockey League entrant) Fischtown Pinguins on Thursday. The wonderfully-named Wiggo Carlgren served as the back-up goalie with Marek Langhamer out injured.

HV71

Head Coach Anton Blomqvist provided an update on his squad’s current state in an interview on HV’s YouTube channel. The main news is that newcomer Tanner Kero is now training with the rest of the team after a minor injury had put him on the sidelines for the past week or so.

Jönköpings-Posten (via HockeyNews.SE) also report that forwards Henrik Borgström and Mattias Tedenby are back in training, albeit apart from the main group, as is defenseman Mikael Seppälä. The latter has been out since December 30th due to a back injury. Expecting him to be fully ready for Opening Day may still be optimistic, but the prospect of Seppälä being with the team early into the new season will be encouraging for HV fans.

Linköping

Linköping have announced today that their captain, Oscar Fantenberg, will be sitting out training for the next couple of weeks. The club posted an injury update on their website (as per Google Translate):

Linköping Hockey Club’s physiotherapist Jonas Emmoth gives us an update regarding Oscar Fantenberg. The defender and team captain Oscar Fantenberg has had a feeling in his upper body during the week. After investigations by the medical team, it is established that Oscar is removed from regular training to undergo rehabilitation. This means that Oscar will not participate in regular training or games for the next couple of weeks.

That makes Fantenberg’s status for Opening Day questionable, although with one month still to go it’s possible he will just about make it.

22/08/2024 0 comments

SHL Line-Ups

SHL: 15 August

by Matthew Smith 15/08/2024

written by Matthew Smith

Before I get to the news, if you’re not already familiar with HockeyNews.SE then I can heartily recommend them – and their premium subscription – as a great source of news, interviews and features about Swedish hockey and the NHL. It’s all in Swedish (reasonably enough!), but Google Translate works really well in converting it into English.

Not only do they offer their own reporting, they also highlight key news reported by other outlets. That’s invaluable if you live outside of Sweden as all of the main national and local newspaper websites, plus hockeysverige.se, require payment using Klarna and the BankID service that – as far as I’ve ever been able to establish – is not available to non-Swedish residents.

Onto the Line-Up news …

Brynäs

Brynäs started their pre-season training game schedule on Thursday against Timrå.

Returning hero Jakob Silfverberg was used on the top line alongside Jordan Schroeder and Oskar Lindblom, whilst Christian Djoos and Charles-Édouard D’astous were paired up defensively. Defenseman Simon Bertilsson was the main absentee.

Timrå

As for Timrå, Olli Jokinen’s first unofficial line-up as Head Coach featured young Finnish forward Oliver Kapanen, the Montréal Canadiens’ 2nd round draft pick in 2021, centring the top line alongside Filip Hållander and Jonathan Dahlén.

Publicly there’s still uncertainty over which team Kapanen will be playing for in the 2024-25 season. He made 64 appearances for KalPa in the Finnish Liiga last season, including 13 play-off games from which he was credited for 14 points. Kapanen then decided to make the SHL the next step in his development by signing a two-year contract with Timrå in early May.

However, in mid-June he signed a 3-year Entry-Level Contract with the Canadiens and he will be joining the NHL team in early September for their pre-season training camp. Whilst it is still probable that Kapanen will head back to Timrå, there is some talk that he has a chance of making Montréal’s roster if he impresses in their camp. That would be great news for Kapanen, but a real blow to Timrå.

Malmö Redhawks

Goaltender Marek Langhammer was not involved in Malmö’s game on Thursday against Oskarshamn. Daniel Marmenlind was the starting goalie, so Langhammer he have just got some training work in instead rather than being the back-up.

After not being involved in Malmö’s first training game, Fredrik Händemark and Otto Stenberg played against Oskarshamn, joined on the same line by Axel Sundberg. Johan Ivarsson replaced Joseph Burger in defense.

Rögle

New signing Jacob Peterson is dealing with a shoulder injury and will not be involved in Rögle’s first few training games. It doesn’t sound like something that will slow him down for long, though, and the rest of the squad are ready to go.

Head Coach Roger Hansson revealed to Helsingborgs Dagblad the forward lines and defensive pairings that he will be starting out with, as reported by HockeyNews.SE. I’ve updated the Rögle lineup chart to match.

15/08/2024 0 comments

Swedish Hockey

Malmö Begin Their Off-Season

by Matthew Smith 19/03/2024

written by Matthew Smith

Malmö’s 2023-24 Swedish Hockey League season can be seen as an improvement on their previous campaign.

The Redhawks finished 2022-23 bottom of the table on 61 points and managed to escape relegation to the HockeyAllsvenskan by beating Brynäs 4-1 in the best-of-seven relegation series.

This time around they were able to avoid going through the nerve-jangling tension of the Kvalmatch nedflyttning (qualifying match relegation); however they only finished one place above the drop-zone and with four more points than they amassed in the previous season (from 61 to 65).

That means Björn Liljander, Malmö’s Sporting Director, will be drawing up a plan on how he can improve his roster this off-season.

That process publicly began today with Liljander conducting a 37-minute interview with Malmö’s in-house media team. Whilst the video is in Swedish, there are some details that have been published on the website accompanying the interview in which there is a list of players who will not be returning to the team for the 24-25 season. They are as follows:

Nuutti Viitasalo
Alan Quine
Janne Kuokkanen
Kim Rosdahl
Adam Werner
Joakim Ryan
Lauri Pajuniemi
Tomi Sallinen.

It was already known that the excellent Finnish pair Kuokkanen and Pajuniemi had opted to move to the Swiss National League, reportedly having agreements in place with Lausanne, whilst goaltender Adam Werner is joining TPS in Finland’s Liiga.

Former NHL defenseman Joakim Ryan has spent the past three seasons in Malmö and his experience will be missed, although financial decisions (on either side) may have played a role in the two parties going their separate ways.

That’s all part of the balance every Sporting Director or General Manager has to get right when reshaping a roster, but that’s especially the case for Liljander in working with one of the smallest – if not the smallest – budgets in the SHL . Even if he might prefer to keep some of those players, it may not be the best use of the money he has available to him this off-season.

New recruits are already being lined up. Sydsvenskan reported last week that Malmö are close to agreeing a deal to sign forward Joona Ikonen, who currently plays for Ilves in Finland. He turns 26 years old in May and is having the best season of his career to date, amassing 47 points from 58 regular season games. The same media report also confirmed that the Redhawks have an interest in signing Robin Hanzl, who is a free agent after spending the past three seasons playing for Timrå.

Meanwhile Expressen reported recently that the team has a deal in place with Finnish defenseman Lassi Thomson, the 19th overall selection in the 2019 NHL draft. Whilst Thomson has made 18 NHL appearances for the Ottawa Senators, he has spent all of the current season playing for their AHL affiliate in Belleville and apparently has decided to move back to Europe this summer.

Expressen also reported back in January that young Norwegian centre Petter Vesterheim, currently with Mora, has agreed to step up to the SHL with Malmö this summer.

Although Liljander doesn’t have an easy job whilst working within budgetary restraints, he’s started making some moves in the hope that his team will be able to look up towards the play-off spots, rather than looking over their shoulder once again in 2024-25

19/03/2024 0 comments