Round two of this exercise was more enjoyable for a few reasons. Most notably, Team Sweden’s talent pool is significantly deeper than Finland’s. Analytics aside, it would be hard to put together a bad roster here, particularly up front.

Very few of the Swedish “household names” at the NHL level are vanity players (i.e. a lot of raw point production with little underlying substance). For the most part, everyone you probably think is good is actually a massively impactful NHL player on the analytics side.

So, without further delay, let’s dive in.

Anthony

Forwards

The forward group was tough to choose because of the sheer amount of Swedish NHLers with underlying numbers that range from good to phenomenal. My preliminary list had 20 forwards on it. I was able to narrow it down to 14 pretty easily. The last two cuts were tough. For the sake of full disclosure, my last two “big name” eliminations were Filip Forsberg and Victor Arvidsson of the Nashville Predators (sorry, Preds fans).

Gabriel Landeskog – Elias Pettersson – William Nylander

William Karlsson – Nicklas Backstrom – Mika Zibanejad

Andre Burakovsky – Joel Eriksson Ek – Elias Lindholm

Carl Hagelin – Calle Jarnkrok – Jesper Bratt

The top line doesn’t require a whole lot of explanation. Pettersson is a consensus top-five player in hockey. There isn’t any area where his underlying impacts aren’t outstanding. He is the very definition of elite. Nylander gets some heat for disappearing during the playoffs, but he is still a massively impactful offensive entity and high-end setup man.

As for Landeskog, he provides a balanced skillset on the wing. The same goes for Nylander who can do everything but finish consistently. Speaking of which, the only concern here is that Pettersson is the only consistent finisher on the line, but there is so much playmaking skill, it shouldn’t make much difference.

The second line of Karlsson, Backstrom, and Zibanejad are an offensive possession powerhouse. All three of them are offensively impactful, but they have balanced attacking roles. Karlsson is a Corsi monster who excels as a zone-entry entity (primarily as a puck-carrier).

The veteran Backstrom continues to post strong impacts (despite his age), particularly on the defensive end of the ice. He also remains an upper-echelon puck distributor from the center position.

Zibanejad provides a perfect complement to the group with his elite finishing ability at even-strength. While his isolated xGF/xGA impacts aren’t historically good, his linemates can help “cover-up” for those inefficiencies and allow him to be fully optimized as a shooting weapon.  To me, they represent a very well-balanced offensive trio that would ideally be deployed with a high OZS rate.

The third line is perhaps the most interesting. Burakovsky does just about everything well and provides some play-driven acumen on the wing. Eriksson Ek is a budding star in the NHL. Like Pettersson, it’s very difficult to find a flaw in his game at either end of the ice.

As for Lindholm, his best work is in his own end. That said, he has two strong transition players on his line who would benefit from his presence in the defensive zone. For this reason, I would tilt this line’s deployment a bit more defensively as I feel they would do an extremely efficient job of flipping the ice.

Rounding out the group is our defensive shutdown line. All three of Hagelin, Jarnkrok, and Bratt rank in the 85th-percentile or higher in xGA rate among NHL forwards. Through Bratt is the only one of the group who has some offensive upside, this group will be leaned on heavily in defensive deployment situations. This probably goes without saying, but they’ll also handle shutting down opposing scoring lines.

Another positive to this trio is the fact that Bratt is one of the more efficient zone-exit entities in the league at forward. So, he can help facilitate exits for two players in Hagelin and Jarnkrok who aren’t as strong in that area.

Defense

Despite the fact that Sweden doesn’t have the same embarrassment of talent depth on defense as they do up front, the Tre Kronor has an absurdly talented blue line. The only true gut-wrenching decision I had to make here was the omittance of Rasmus Dahlin from the defensive top-six. That said, he would still make the trip as the seventh defenseman if I was given the option to carry one.

Victor Hedman – Adam Larsson

Jonas Brodin – John Klingberg

Mattias Ekholm – Marcus Pettersson

The top pairing is pretty self-explanatory. Though Hedman might be starting the “downswing” of his career, he still ranked 12^th among NHL defensemen last season with an ixG rate of .35. Though he’s no longer one of the consensus top blueliners in the NHL, he’s still a very impactful presence, particularly on offense.

Larsson’s strength is as a defensive asset. Among the 209 NHL defensemen who played a minimum of 300 minutes last season, the 28-year-old ranked 26^th with an xGA/60 rate of 1.92. He’s an ideal complement beside a player like Hedman whose defensive impacts have taken a hit as he’s aged. The second pairing features a player who might be the NHL’s top defensive defenseman in Brodin. Of the 219 NHL defensemen who have played a minimum of 1,000 minutes since 2018, he ranks fourth in the NHL with an xGA/60 rate of 1.89.

Opposite him is Klingberg, an offensively talented asset who excels in particular on the man advantage. Though the 29-year-old is coming off a mediocre 2020-21 season (by his standards at least) he would benefit from skating with an elite defensive asset in Brodin. Lastly, I had to make amends with Predators fans and include another offensively gifted blueliner in Ekholm. Though he struggles to make positive impacts in his own end, he has done excellent work on Nashville’s second-pair, posting an xGF rate of 51.3% since 2018.

Rounding out the group is Pettersson, a player who might be one of the most underrated defensemen in the NHL. Though he offers very little in terms of offense, he was far and away the best overall impact player on the Pittsburgh Penguins’ blue line in 2020-21 (overall xGF rate of 52.64%). Again, the goal here was to provide a complementary piece to facilitate offensive contributions from the player’s defensive partner.

Goaltenders

Robin Lehner

Linus Ullmark

There wasn’t too much competition here. Despite the fact that Team Sweden historically has a really nice set of netminders to choose from, their NHL ranks are somewhat thin at the moment. Lehner is the runaway top choice. Since 2018, he ranks eighth in the NHL, stopping nearly 15 goals over expectation. None of his currently active countrymen really come close. As for the backup spot, it came down to Ullmark and Jacob Markstrom. Neither player has posted consistently positive metrics, but Ullmark took a step up last season (which earned him a long-term deal with the Boston Bruins this summer).

Chad

There’s going to be a little more cross-over on this one because a lot of the Swedish players are no-brainer picks and make up most of the roster. However, we did end up with a few differences. Just like in the post we did about Finland, I’ll focus on who I picked that was different and why I selected those players.

Forwards

The Swedes have the potential to bring an elite forward group to this tournament. They have a lot of scoring talent and a few players that are some of the best two-way forwards in the game. Here is how I would put together their top four lines in the tournament:

Filip Forsberg – Elias Pettersson – Gabriel Landeskog

William Karlsson – Nicklas Backstrom – William Nylander

Elias Lindholm – Mika Zibanejad – Andre Burakovsky

Viktor Arvidsson – Joel Eriksson-Ek – Jakob Silfverberg

The first player and perhaps the biggest name that we have a discrepancy on is scoring winger Filip Forsberg. Perhaps this was an overlook by Anthony, but he’s easily on this roster. He doesn’t get that much hype around the league because he plays for the Nashville Predators, but he’s one of the best scoring wingers in the game when he’s on.

The next difference is with a former Predator and now Los Angeles King in Viktor Arvidsson. The 27-year-old winger had a down year last season, but I’m placing some of that blame on shooting luck. He shot 2.5 goals below expected last season at 5 on 5, according to Moneypuck. In Evolving Hockey’s goals above replacement model, he actually had an uptick in on-ice production.

He’ll likely decline as he continues to age, but he’s still an effective player. The Kings could be in for some nice buy-low return on Arvidsson next season. The veteran brings speed and is a player that can get on a scoring run during this short tournament.

The final difference is that I selected Jakob Silfverberg from the Anaheim Ducks. I’m bringing in Silfverberg as a player that can play in multiple roles and play more of a shut-down role on a line with Joel Eriksson-Ek. His defensive impacts over the last three years have been strong on one of the worst defensive clubs in the league. There’s also some potential for offense out of him at the bottom of my lineup.

Defense

The blue line for Tre kronor could be one of the best in the tournament. They have high-end players that are great at both ends of the ice.

Victor Hedman – Adam Larsson

Jonas Brodin – Rasmus Dahlin

Mattias Ekholm – John Klingberg

Our blue line is pretty much the same outside of one particular player. Anthony went with Pettersson and I decided to go with Rasmus Dahlin. Hampus Lindholm is another player that I considered here over Pettersson, but I decided to go with Dahlin.

He’s not a player that is going to have outstanding underlying numbers at this point in his career, but I’m going to use fancy spots to spin why this makes sense. I would pair him with one of the best defensive defensemen in the NHL, Jonas Brodin. That would alleviate the concern about Dahlin’s game in his own end. It also allows the 21-year-old defender to get out in transition and be a dynamic player offensively.

You can see in Micah’s impact chart above that he was able to recover under Don Granato last season with the ability to play that open game again. He created offense for his club and the Swedes are going to need to keep up with the high-powered offenses of the Americans, Canadians, and Russians. There’s just too much talent and potential there with Dahlin to leave him off the roster.

Goaltenders

We went with the same two goaltenders here. Robin Lehner and Linus Ullmark seem like the two favorites at this point. It’s possible that Jacob Markstrom could steal that backup role from Ullmark with a strong start to this upcoming season.

So, who takes round two?

Photo Credit: Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS / Getty

Data via: Evolving Hockey, Hockeyviz.com, Moneypuck, and JFresh