finland sweden vs nhl teams was helsinki stockholm nhl expansion in tervio katk helsinki fi tervio katk helsinki fi writes now what if the two teams were merged this has been proposed in tampere with ilves lynx and tappara axe the fans wouldn t take it they rather see their teams out of the playoffs most of the time or even relegated than merged it s not that difficult to understand it s just like here in helsinki you grow up being either a jokerit or hifk fan the other team is the last team in the world you would support i m not talking about hate but about extremely deeply rooted rivalry deeply rooted rivalry ahem jokerit have been around since and joined the top flight only in the early s helsingfors ifk have been around since but fans only started taking hockey seriously in the s so i think you re exagerating here however it s been proved that both fan groups can cheer the same team that s the finnish national team maybe that s how you could set up a huge franchise in finland no one has ever said that the team must be called after one city or play all its games on one arena just one team finland and team sweden in the nhl just wouldn t make any sense we have way more talent than th of the total of north american talent after a couple of seasons you would never see the cup going anywhere outside the nordic presuming that our teams would have the advantage in drafting local talent as prooposed that s a rather bold claim in the light of how successful the canadian american olympic teams have been and they ve had to play according to our set of rules and on international ice the olympic teams contained about as much talent as your average expansion team canada had eric lindros sean burke joe juneau and chris kontos another four or five have been deep subs in the nhl as for the yanks keith tkachuk scott lachance bret hedican shawn mceachern steve heintze ted donato joe sacco and bill guerin have been rd th line players in the nhl while robb stauber has done well for the kings in goal nothing more in fact i m sure that an all star team assembled from the best finnish league teams would do no better in the nhl than hartford or tampa bay currently are doing but what happens if all top class finnish swedish players gradually end up with helsinki stockholm as the north american based ones gradually retire and no canadian american team is allowed to draft new players from scandinavia here is what the hockey news scouts think of our nhl based players superstar star nhl regular nhl regular role player finland d jyrki lumme d teppo numminen d peter ahola c jari kurri c christian ruuttu r teemu selanne l esa tikkanen obviously selanne s ratings would be higher today than they were in january sweden d ulf samuelsson d fredrik olausson d niklas lidstrom d calle johansson d kjell samuelsson d tommy sjodin d tommy albelin c mats sundin c thomas steen r thomas sandstrom r ulf dahlen r michael nylander l per erik eklund l johan garpenlov l mikael andersson l jan erixon this would be interesting clearly finland s top five players winnipeg s selanne numminen vancouver s lumme los angeles jari kurri and new york s tikkanen are right up there with any five man unit pittsburgh co have but i have my doubts about the home based finnish players the national team did well in the canada cup and world championships largely due to the efforts of markus ketterer the goalie or the players listed above and luck there s presumably a lot of decent players in finland that wouldn t be superstars at the highest level but still valuable role players however my guess would be that the finnish canada cup team would be a team in the nhl sweden is easier to judge because they have more players in north america their points total players is seven more than ottawa s top players combined if we estimate there are six more nhl regulars back home in sweden an all swedish team would assemble about skill points deducting some points from pittsburgh ny rangers and other teams that rely on swedish players the swedish team would finish in sixth place about as high as boston vancouver calgary and montreal on paper so the dynasty talk isn t completely unfounded here an all finnish all swedish team might have an advantage because the players would be playing at home half of the time won t have to adapt to a foreign country and a foreign language and presumably play the wide open european variant of hockey rather than have to learn the north american checking game however if free agency becomes a factor the top scandinavian players still might end up playing for large market teams after a couple of years the same way edmonton s dynasty crumbled in the late s some fringe players likely will be drafted by other nhl teams as having an exclusive talent pool might be a bit unfair after all i d settle for a compromise prohibit all european teams from signing a north american during the first two rounds but allow them to keep their top two players after this the amateur draft should be open to anyone j o o j o o j o k e r i t finland over czech in the final b r u i n p o w e r bruins over blackhawks in marcu
