CHL Swedes & Finns make an impression at U19 tourney

This past weekend the city of Gothenburg hosted a five-nation tournament for U19 teams where players from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Germany fought hard to make a great impression on their coaching staffs for a bigger chance of being a part of the next year’s World Junior rosters.

by Efraim Larsson

GOTHENBURG – Sweden were the best team at this five-team U19 tournament, and with four wins on home ice won the the tournament, losing only one point in a shootout win against Switzerland. On the Swedish roster, 11 players were listed on their club’s Champions Hockey League roster, with nine of them playing at least one game. The two who didn't play were the two goalies, Erik Källgren of Linköping HC and Jesper Eriksson of Skellefteå AIK.

Frölunda Gothenburg's John Nyberg started the tournament as Sweden's seventh defenceman but increased his minutes and played a lot in the last two games.

“We said that we would start the tournament with all seven defencemen playing a lot, but apparently I managed to get more confidence from the coaching staff and increased my ice-time,” Nygren told Christian Wahlgren of Pucksnack.com.

Nygren is used to playing at Frölundaborg, the regular home rink of the Frölunda U20 team, but “it was extra fun to play here in this tournament and it's a great opportunity to show your skills and what you can do.”

Another blueliner that played a lot in the CHL was Marcus Pettersson of Skellefteå, who was named the best defenceman of the tournament. He was second in scoring among d-men and played a big role both defensively and offensively for Sweden.

Just as Sweden, Finland also had 11 players listed on CHL rosters, but only six of them played at least one CHL game this season. Included among them were the top-scoring defenceman and forward of the tournament. Sami Niku of JYP Jyväskylä led all rearguards with four points and Teemu Lämsä, who played seven CHL games for TPS Turku, scored scored five goals in three games. The recently turned 19-year-old forward was one of the most outstanding players after scoring two goals against both Sweden and Switzerland.

“I think that everything just came together really well in this tournament and I’m satisfied with the outcome of my performance. Of course it’s a huge honour to represent Finland in a tournament like this,” Lämsä said after the game against Sweden.

When we take a look at the scoring leaders among the CHLers we find a dominance of Swedish and Finnish players, who occupied all of the top six spots. The only other CHLers to score a goal were Edson Harlacher of the Kloten Flyers and Filip Kuťák of Vítkovice Ostrava, with one each. Kai Wissman of Eisbären Berlin was the only German in the tournament from a CHL roster.

#	NAME	POS.	NAT.	TEAM	GPI	G	A	P	PIM	+/-
15	Teemu Lämsä	F	FIN	TPS	3	5	0	5	0	-1
29	Henrik Törnqvist	F	SWE	Linköping	4	2	3	5	2	+1
11	Manu Honkanen	F	FIN	TPS	4	3	1	4	0	+4
6	Sami Niku	D	FIN	JYP	4	2	2	4	2	+2
8	Marcus Pettersson	D	SWE	Skellefteå	4	0	3	3	2	+3
7	Jere Rouhiainen	D	FIN	Tappara	4	0	3	3	4	+2
6	Edson Harlacher	D	SUI	Kloten	4	1	1	2	2	0
26	Christoffer Ehn	F	SWE	Frölunda	4	0	2	2	2	+2
5	Sebastian Moberg	D	FIN	IFK Helsinki	4	0	2	2	2	0
35	Pierre Engvall	F	SWE	Frölunda	1	1	0	1	0	+1
15	Filip Kuťák	F	CZE	Vítkovice	4	1	0	1	2	0
3	Emil Johansson	D	SWE	HV71	4	0	1	1	2	+6
20	Mikka Pitkänen	F	FIN	KalPa	4	0	1	1	0	+4
3	Miro Keskitalo	D	FIN	TPS	4	0	1	1	2	+2
4	Niko Mikkola	D	FIN	KalPa	4	0	1	1	4	+1
13	Antti Kauppinen	F	FIN	Tappara	4	0	1	1	2	+1
9	Petter Hansson	D	SWE	Linköping	4	0	1	1	2	+1
5	Marco Forrer	D	SUI	Zug	4	0	1	1	2	0
10	Jiří Černoch	F	CZE	Sparta	4	0	1	1	0	-3
12	Kai Wissman	D	GER	Eisbären	4	0	1	1	2	-4
4	Ondřej Mikliš	D	CZE	Sparta	1	0	0	0	0	0
15	Kevin Elgestål	F	SWE	Frölunda	2	0	0	0	0	0
14	John Nyberg	D	SWE	Frölunda	4	0	0	0	0	+5
7	Adam Ollas Mattsson	D	SWE	Djurgården	4	0	0	0	6	+3
9	Silvio Schmutz	D	SUI	Zug	4	0	0	0	4	0
3	Jan Ščotka	D	CZE	Pardubice	4	0	0	0	4	-1
28	Joona Jääskeläinen	F	FIN	SaiPa	4	0	0	0	0	-1
2	Romain Chuard	D	SUI	Genève-Servette	4	0	0	0	6	-2
21	Daniel Voženílek	F	CZE	Pardubice	4	0	0	0	2	-3

And when looking at the goalie stats for the five goalies that were listed on any CHL club (none of them did in fact play in the CHL, though) Sweden’s Källgren is clearly on top. Czech goalie Vítek Vaněček of Bílí Tygři Liberec, the only goalie in this tournament to dress as a backup for a CHL game, is also the only one to appear in all four of his team's games.

#	NAME	POS.	NAT.	TEAM	GPI	MIP	GA	SOG	SAVE%	GAA	SO
1	Erik Källgren	G	SWE	Linköping	2	125:00	3	57	94.74%	1.44	1
2	Vítek Vaněček	G	CZE	Liberec	4	200:00	7	98	92.86%	2.10	0
30	Jesper Eriksson	G	SWE	Skellefteå	2	120:00	4	55	92.73%	2.00	0
30	Sami Väliharju	G	FIN	Kärpät	2	120:00	3	38	92.11%	1.50	1
1	Ludovic Waeber	G	SUI	Fribourg-Gottéron	2	118:14	7	71	90.14%	3.55	0

Källgren played a great game against the Czech Republic in the last game, where he stopped all 25 shots and made a couple of incredible saves when the Czechs tried to tie the game in the second period.

The goalie from Linköping HC himself told me that he was a bit nervous in the beginning of his first game against Switzerland and continued, “I was able to pull it together after a while and help the guys finish the game with a win. After all it was my debut, so I think the nervousness was pretty expected and understandable. My second game against the Czech Republic was overall really good, I think, and I had a great feeling through the whole game.”

In the third period he made an incredible stick save on an open net and explained, “Haha, I saw the puck late and realized that I was screwed up since I was a bit slow to react at first, but I managed to react to the puck and more or less just made an attempt to cover up as much as possible and somehow managed to save it.”

All of the players now return to their club teams to make the finish race of the season and then we’ll probably see a lot of them in the next year’s World Juniors – at latest.