SHL preview

There will be less risk of relegating for the 12 teams in SHL this year as the league will expand to 14 teams from the 2015/2016 season. It looks the league will be very even this year as many of the top teams has lost many key players.

The season opens tomorrow Wednesday with the nordic derby between Luleå and Skellefteå. Skellefteå who won the title the last two season has lost half their team including several big offensive names as Joakim Lindström, Jimme Ericsson, Oscar Möller, Bud Holloway and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. The replacers aren't close to the same standard but Mikko Lehtonen and Patrik Zackrisson will be important. Skellefteå won't be favourites this year but is still likely to be a top team, many young talents will be given the chance.

Luleå is hard to predict with a new coach in Joakim Fagervall. Several key players left Luleå as well including Linus Klasen, Linus Omark and Johan Fransson. Stephen Dixon and Lennart Petrell will have a hard job filling the gaps. It will also be interesting to see what Daniel Zaar can do at this level. Luleå has been doing good in CHL so far but what about the opposition?

On Thursday there are four games played. Leksand-Färjestad, Modo-Örebro, Växjö-HV71 and Frölunda-Brynäs.

Leksand have a lot of new players and the roster looks stronger than last year even if hard shooting defender Patrik Hersley will be missed at the power play. Several foreign players like Tomi Sallinen, Jack Connolly, Eric Himmelfarb, Tomi Kähkönen, Brian Connely and Veli-Matti Savinaien are new. Who will be succesful and who will not?

Färjestad has a new coach in Tommy Samuelsson who is back in the club after a stay in Wien. Jakub Klepis was a late signing that could be important in a team where most other signings are solid SHL players but without any star shine. It feels like it will be another year without big success for the club with a winning tradition even if Joakim Hillding is one of few top ten scorers from last season still in the league.

Modo believes in a succesful season but is the roster good enough? Joonas Näätinen, Kyle Flanagan, Travis Roche and Marko Kauppinen are foreign players that are hard to predict how they will perform. Jonas Ahnelöv is a solid signing on defense however.

Örebro, survived their first year in SHL last year, how will they do in the hard second year? Derek Ryan scored a lot of points in Austria and just as in many other teams he is only one of many new foreign players in Örebro. Julius Hudacek is back in Sweden and is likely to be starting goaltender.

Växjö who have only made a couple of season in SHL are considered one of the main contenders this year. They made a good season last year and have brought in a good goalie in Calder Cup winner Christopeher Nihlstorp. But is the team really good enough? Dennis Rasmussen has left for NHL and none of the signings seems super hot, what can Nick Johnson who did nine games for Boston Bruins last year do?

HV71 had a bad year last year and can only expect to do better this year. Mattias Tedenby is back in the club to the delight of the fans and so are also Erik Ersberg and Björn Melin. Calle Ridderwall who made a success in DEL is another interesting signing but will be enough to make it far?

Frölunda is the team with fewest new players, only five. Elias Fälth might be a good signing for this young team and Mattias Janmark should be a nice addition as well. Four young guns Tom Nilsson, John Klingberg, Alexander Wennberg and Sebastian Collberg all left for NHL and star Dick Axelsson moved to Switzerland.

Brynäs looks much weaker than last year especially on offense. Star defender Ryan Gunderson left the team together with several forwards. Niclas Andersén is a really good addition on defense. But now the team is hurt by several injuries on just defense so the start of the season could be hard.

The other two teams Linköping and Djurgården will play they first games in the second round this weekend as they play their first round game on Monday.

Linköping had three super scorers last year. Since Pär Arlbrandt and Simon Hjalmarsson left only Chad Kolarik is left. Broc Little hopefully can replace some of the points together with Jacob Micflikier. But even if the teams scored many goals last year they didn't perform very well and they hope to improve that with two new goalies in Jacob Johansson and David Rautio who will make an interesting duo. Notable that even if there were some defensive troubles last year there are no new defenders on the roster.

Djurgården is back in SHL after a few years in Allsvenskan. They managed to promote even if their season were much up and down. Mikael Tellqvist (GK) and Mikael Samuelsson (F) are both two players with NHL experience but perhaps they are past the top of their careers? Daniel Fernholm and Markus Nordlund are good signings on defense but it hard to say how long it will reach.

As you can see it feels like the level of SHL is worst this year and it's really hard to predict which teams that will do good or not. In 55 rounds we will now which six teams who go directly to quarter finals, which four that will play play-in and which teams two teams that will have to play in a best of seven qualification round against two teams of Allsvenskan to stay in SHL.

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