On Wednesday 5 December Team Sweden announced it's squad for the forthcoming Junior World Championships in Vancouver where Sweden will be hoping to go one better than their Silver last year.
The team is mainly drawn from the top division, the Swedish Hockey League (SHL), but includes a number of unexpected names from the second tier, Hockey Allsvenskan.
But in this article I'm going to take a look at the players who are currently playing in North America.
They have, naturally, all played at international level in every age category from U16 upwards and all, apart from one have been captain or assistant captain at for the national team. It is primarily their achievements on the international stage that drawn attention of North Americans clubs that they now play for but they have all played in the SHL whilst still juniors.
The six players are drawn from two different leagues - the American Hockey League (AHL) and the Ontario Hockey League (OHL).
The AHL will be familiar to readers of my blog, as the development league for the NHL teams. The standard is similar to the SHL but the age group younger, usually between 18-25. This is because of the because of complicated eligibility rules which are focused on developing a through-flow of players who can develop in their time there before moving on.
So the AHL is not only is the training ground for potential NHL stars, but is the workplace for both North Americans and Swedes who will later be key players in the SHL and other European leagues. For example Rhett Rakhshani, Andrew Gordon, Jacob Josefson and Cristopher Nihlstorp have all had significant spells in the league.
The OHL is one of three junior leagues in Canada for those aged 16-21 and is considered one of the toughest in the world as players fight, often literally, for their professional hockey career. Both Toronto and Ottawa lie in the province of Ontario and over a third of Canada's population live there making it a natural home for the country's national sport. The league's most famous son is Wayne Gretzky but Chicago Blackhawks' Patrick Kane also played in the league.
We're now going to take a look at each player in turn, first Erik Brännström, Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren who are in the AHL; then Adam Boqvist (pictured), Rikard Hugg and Hugo Leufvenius who are in the OHL.
@ABritOnThinIce1
