MILAN — Oliver Ekman-Larsson has geared up for both of Team Sweden’s Olympic games, but he did something Friday against Finland that he didn’t do Wednesday versus Italy.
He played hockey.
Serving as his country’s seventh defenceman, the veteran clocked an ice time of 0:00 in Sweden’s opening win.
“I was joking around that I had the best seat in the house,” Ekman-Larsson said, chuckling, downplaying the fact that his only exercise was during warmups.
No big deal, he argued. So, please, don’t turn it into one.
“I’m here to support my team, and I’m here to play if they need me to play,” Ekman-Larsson said. “We’re going to need everybody that’s here to kind of pull together and be on the same page, and that’s where we are.”
Ekman-Larsson saw a whopping 7:36 in Friday’s 4-1 loss to Finland, while 13th forward Filip Forsberg jumped from 67 seconds’ worth of ice time in the opener (one shift!) to a hardy 9:31 Friday — even though the Swedes were desperate for a goal.
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Swedish coach Sam Hallam defends his deployment by pointing to the expanded IIHF roster rules, which permit 13 forwards and seven defencemen as opposed to the 12 and six customary in the NHL and used at the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“If we wouldn’t dress seven and 13 and get an early injury, I would look pretty stupid,” Hallam said.
“We can’t play 25. That’s the honest truth about it. You’re here to play for our country, and it’s a tournament. We’re going to need each and every one of them. That’s the way it is, but everybody can’t play.”
Finland’s seventh D-man, Oliver Kapanen, got the Ekman-Lasson treatment Friday, clocking a 0:00 TOI. (An anti-Oliver bias is at play, perhaps?)
Meanwhile, Canada and the U.S. made more use of their extra skaters Thursday.
(The longer bench benefitted Canada coach Jon Cooper, who simply plugged in Shea Theodore when Canadian defenceman Josh Morrissey was injured mid-game.)
At worst, the extra bodies can mess up the rotation and rhythm of a team in sync.
At best, a specialist can enhance special teams, swipe a big D-zone face-off, or score a critical shootout goal.
“It can be challenging at times, not as much for the coach but for the player. You never want somebody to sit there and be a grocery stick and not get to play at all,” Cooper said.
“That’s kind of pointless. You want to keep guys involved, but you also don’t want to ruin the chemistry of a line that’s going. So, a lot of communication goes on with that, and it can kind of divide the team a bit.”
Until Morrissey went down, Theodore’s primary task was to quarterback Canada’s second power-play unit. While depth centres Bo Horvat and Sam Bennett took turns Thursday on the fourth line, Horvat scored, Bennett laid some heavy hits, despite practising on the “fifth” line.
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“They’re sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I thought I might be out of the lineup. I don’t care if I get one shift, I don’t care.’ And so, that’s what’s great about this group,” Cooper said.
In Team USA’s debut romp over Latvia, seventh defenceman Noah Hanifin skated a respectable 11:01 and finished plus-2. Thirteenth forward Vincent Trocheck registered an assist in his 9:11.
Both were given 14 shifts.
“We want to keep these guys involved and utilize the bench. That was the game plan going in,” U.S. coach Mike Sullivan said. “We’ve had discussions with the players themselves on how we were going to utilize them throughout the course of the game, and what their role is and define expectations a little bit. These guys have been just awesome with respect to embracing anything that we brought to them.”
Sullivan and his staff studied each player skillset, considering PK roles, power-play proficiency and defensive specialists.
“These guys are willing to accept anything,” Sullivan said. “We have very capable guys deep into our lineup. You know, maybe other teams don’t feel that way. But we feel strongly that we do. And because of that, we feel very confident that we can use them all.”
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