Footie: Canada vs. Estonia

Tonight is the year's first fixture for the Canadian Men's national soccer (hereafter known as football) team. The Canadian team, comprised primarily of European-based players, face Estonia at the rather humourously named, A.Le Coq Arena in Tallinn.

According to http://www.canadasoccer.com/eng/bootroom/viewArtical_csa.asp?Press_ID=3104 a web cast will be available on CBC.ca. I've yet to find a link.

The two teams met March 29, 2003, also a friendly, with Canada losing 2:1.

Facing the small Baltic land of Estonia in a friendly should be an accurate test for the Canadian side. A convincing win, with a spice of strategy and a side dish of team building would go a long way to justifying their 4th place ranking within CONCACAF and 56th in FIFA. Plus, disposing of the 124th ranked Estonians would lend well to upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Caribbean minnows like Saint Vincent & the Grenadines (ranked 130).

After the under-23 team came within a game of the Olympics, hope for Canadian football has become a bit rejuvinated. A loss tonight would be just plain annoying.

PREDICTION: Canada 3: Estonia 1. Goals by Julian de Guzman, Dwayne De Rosario, Paul Stalteri

In other matches:

• Jonathan de Guzman (brother to Julian) most likely will not play his first match for Netherlands in Vienna versus Austria. Jonathan gave the proverbial finger to Canadian football à la Owen Hargreaves-style. If you can read or understand Dutch, read more here.
  
• Sweden relives the 50th anniversary of their only World Cup final appearance by facing Brasil in a friendly at Emirites Stadium in London.

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UPDATE: Canada loses 2-0 (one was an own goal) on a snowy pitch. Ugh! Meh!

William Quist - the (Nybro) Viking?

The above picture is a so-called Eastern Viking. I admit up front that I have not researched whatsoever the gangsta stylings of North/South/West or Central Vikings, nor can I say what kind of widespread war and pillaging might be sparked by magically placing Oiler prospect William Quist in this shot. Nevertheless, if rumours holds true, Quist may soon join the eastside gang of Vikings in Nybro.

Nybro, located in southeastern Sweden, is home to an Allsvenska team going by the name of the Nybro Vikings. Mr. Quist grew up in the Nybro program and is from the region.

According to a recent interview conducted by CrossChecking.se's Jonas Gustavsson, William could well make a return to the Viking clan.
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To quote the 18 year old:

They (Nybro) called today (March 7) actually. Prior to today, I had been hearing rumours about everywhere except Nybro. It feels like many of those around me are discussing it, but it was only first today that they called. Though it hasn't been any more than that. We will have to see what comes of it.

When asked about his short and abruptly-ended stint with Linköping HC's junior team he added:

It began rather messy and I didn't feel at all comfortable. I took the decision to return to Tingsryd and there I got to play at an "A" team level [professional as opposed to junior] and I must say it has worked out really well for me.

There is a huge difference between Division 1 [pro] and Junior20 SuperElit. Pro hockey is much more structured and organized and that has been very beneficial.

Gustavsson also asked Quist about what contact he has with the Oilers:

Yah, I do have contact and I was at their camp back in the fall.

Regarding his type of play:

I am a rather big player so I try and make use of my size. I tend to also be pretty good at finding the net [Ed.: assume this to mean both scoring and creating traffic].

Finally, with close ties to Nybro, Quist is also familiar with current Nybro coach Lenny Eriksson:

He was the head coach in Nybro during 3 years when I was younger, so I have gotten to know him a bit. He is known for pulling together a team and getting them to buy into a team system.

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This interview scratches the surface, and is top quality "hockey player" answers.  If anything, it is yet a further element of the jigsaw puzzle that was jumbled when William Who? was selected at #157 in the 2007 draft.  

Oilers prospects guru, Guy Flaming posted a thread over on Hockey Futures detailing a bit of insight into Quist and his contact with the Oilers organisation. Perhaps his turning point this season also came thanks to some choice words fromVP of Hockey Operations, Kevin Prendergast.

The Oilogosphere had quite an affinity for former Djurgården and Norwegian national Patrik Thoresen. With that mighty viking now in Philadelphia Flyers silks, might it be time to proclaim a new viking warrior?

It is far to early to give young William that type of status or moniker, but shall the Nybro Vikings be his new home, we might have added reason to believe the Oilers have a new warrior in the makings.

Oilers Prospects in Limbo

Both Södertälje SK and Luleå HF have survived.  But only just.

The two Elite Series teams finished 9th and 10th respectively and both avoid a relegation series. Both also miss the playoffs. 

This means that both Oilers properties in the Elite Series, Björn Bjurling and Linus Omark, are done playing hockey for the season.  Bring on the golf clubs!

Luleå finished tied for 10th with Mora IK  but thanks to having a small goal differential (2 less goals against), came out on top. Oilers prospect, Linus Omark scored in Saturday's decisive 4-2 victory over Timrå.  He finishes the year 3rd in team scoringwith 11G+26A and 46 minutes in penalties.  Most notably, the diminutive left winger was one of only 4 Luleå players to appear in all 55 games.  He did not receive a lot of prime ice-time, but his point totals speak well of how he made use of what he received.

Bjurling had a surprising break-out/come-back year.  He finished 2nd in Elite Series save%, 8th in GAA, and appeared in 30 of Södertälje's games. SSK, as a team was rarely brilliant, but as I outlined in an earlier blog entry, the duo of Bjurling and Enroth often saved Södertälje's metophoric butt.

Tingsryd IF played well down the stretch in division 1 (Allettan Södra) and William Quist got solid playing time.  He scored 12pts (6G+6A) and had a mere 6 penalty minutes in 12 games (post-Christmas); a positive development after what was a bizarre and unproductive autumn. Clearly he will need a higher level of competition next year to further his development. 

Finally, Västerås IK (featuring former Oilers prospect Kalle Olsson - drafted #147  in 2003) is playing a best-of-three against the Växjö Lakers (featuring former University of Alberta Golden Bear Kevin Marsh).   I have not found the line-up from the annual Golden Bears vs. Oilers Rookies game in 2003, though thought this may very well be a sort of rematch.  Time to go wander the internet...

Brett Hull's Secret Plan

I think I found Brett Hull's cheat sheet! 

A week after the NHL trade deadline and I have come to realise something, Brett Hull is plagerizing his former team (so-to-speak) and making his Dallas Stars a whole lot more scandinavian.

Make way for IKEA Poang chairs in the Dallas Stars' dressing room because that is the new direction.

Dallas made a big splash a number of months ago by firing their long time General Manager, Doug Armstrong, and instead hiring the relatively unexpected duo of Les Jackson and Brett Hull.

Last week, in their first trade deadline day, the Stars made a deal with Tampa Bay that netted them Brad Richards and Swedish goalie Johan Holmqvist.  

To the chagrin of Oiler fans everywhere (Edm has been booted out of the playoffs by the Stars too often) Dallas has added fire power and goaltending depth.  They are now better and more Swedish.

The arsenal of Scandinavians now in the big D are Loui Eriksson, Niklas Grossman, Mattias Norstrom, Joel Lundqvist (NY Rangers goalie Henrik's brother), Holmqvist and not to mention their 3 Finns!  This is comparable to the 7 swedes in Detroit (Holmström, Zetterberg, Lilja, Lidström, Kronvall, Samuelsson, Franzen).

Perhaps it is the simplicity of Swedish design which has led to this new hockey philosophy.  Like the calming aura of a glimmering hard wood floor, offset by birch-coloured furnishings, so too can a whole starting line-up of towering scandinavians with cropped blond hair win hockey games.  

Or, so hopes Brett Hull.

The Idoicy of Soccer in America

image courtesy of http://www.forzatoronto.com/
Soccer (hereafter referred to as football) is much more of a global sport than hockey ever will be. At present count, 208 national associations are members of FIFA, as compared with 65 in the IIHF.

When FIFA organizes a tournament, such as the World Cup, the top level world-wide football leagues and associations will steer around it by creating breaks in their schedule. There is one exception among the so-called top leagues: Major League Soccer (MLS).

The MLS, like most other sports in the Excited States of America, sees their league as unto itself. The 2008 schedule was recently released and it takes in zero to no consideration of other world soccer tournaments. Cathal Kelly of the Toronto Star wrote an article detailing how the Canadian and American national teams (among others) will face problems in securing players to World Cup qualifying and for the 2008 Olympic Games due to scheduling conflicts with the MLS.

We are talking about a small window of international matches. CONCACAF and FIFA stipulate international match days sometimes years in advance. World Cup qualifications (group2 stage) will occur on June14-15 and a return on June 21-22. The MLS has planned a slate of 6 matches, for each those two weekends.

I can see an argument from potential clubs from both sides of the coin. A weekend game in June is the best time to draw a paying public. At the same time, to lose a core of players to international duty - often the best players - does a team's competitiveness no favours.

Football has so much goodwill to build in North America and by double booking MLS matches on the same day as internationals, everyone loses. Surely the MLS must realise they are an element of a bigger equation (FIFA), not simply the sum of the parts (the 14 MLS teams).

Baseball’s championship is called the World Series. American Football and the NBA both without qualification hail their championship teams as so-called World Champions. I am not debating the dominance of the leagues, rather that it is smug and ignorant to call a team that plays in a closed league (no outside teams influence play) a World Champion. It would be ridiculous if the champion of Spain’s basketball league, for instance, were to claim world supremacy, so why can the NBA?

The MLS is hardly a dominant league, by global standards. True, it is the top level of competition in North America, but European leagues are clearly of higher quality. A story on Yahoo Sports attempts to rank the best leagues and gives special commendation to the MLS, Japan’s J-League, Australia’s A-League, Mexico’s Primera and Russia's top league. Obviously missing in the analysis is any reference to the tremendous competition in Argentina and Brasil.

Sweden's Allsvenska is similiar to the MLS in a variety of ways. Its season also plays through the summer and it too is hardly a big-name league (ranked 28th in Europe!). The Swedish league though takes into consideration international play in its scheduling - 2008 sees a break from May 12 - July 1 due to UEFA Euro 2008. Although the league does not boast a large number of big name international players, they do support their national football program by implementing this break in the schedule.

Let's face it, the MLS and the Allsvenska are minnows in a big pond. Sadly, the MLS' actions in scheduling make it look more like a clownfish.

Toronto FC is the only Canadian franchise and, as such, has to carry a quota of Canadian players. This can lead to problems when the Canadian national team will come calling. TFC management should clearly try and move the June 14 away game (vs. Colorado) and June 21 home game (vs. Kansas City) to weeknights to alleviate potential roster problems. Hopefully other teams might follow suit.

For competition in any sport, world and regional tournaments must be respected! Professional leagues would have no base of players whatsoever if it were not for the national programs, doing the hard ground-work to build sport in small communities around the world. We all deserve to see the fruits of their labour on the international stage.

Fun fact 1: Canada won the gold medal in football at the 1904 Olympic games in St. Louis.
Fun fact 2: The tournament in 1904 featured just 3 teams. 2 from the US and 1 from Canada. Hoorah for Galt FC (Canada's team)!

BANDY: the Women’s World Championship began yesterday in Borlänge (250km NW of Stockholm). There are 7 matches jammed into 4 days of competition. Canada is seen as a threat to crack the medals but, like the men, Sweden and Russia are almost guaranteed to play for gold and silver. Canada faced both Sweden and Russia on day 1. The match versus Sweden was a mere 10-1 loss. We fared much better against Russia, losing 3-1. Go Canada!

A Bit of Miscellaneous

Bandy: Canada lost 7-1 to the US and finished 2nd in group B. In an article prior to the match, coach Göran Svensson mention the disparity, not just of group A to group B, but even within Group B. Mongolia, Holland and Hungary should be their own Group C it would seem. That said, perhaps the disparity between A & B isn't that huge. The US lost only by two goals 6-4 to Belarus. Looks like we get a USA-Canada rematch next year when the World Championship will be in Sweden.
In other Bandy news: surprise surprise, Russia wins gold, Sweden silver and Finland bronze - like every year.

Oilers drafts: William Quist has 6points in 7 games since January 1 with Tingsryd. He is usually listed as a third line forward (Tingsryd rarely has a fourth line) and thus is often more of a role player. A quote from a January 20 game summary states: "The (game) play is really dynamic when the junior line comes in. Quist is in a great play mood and their first two shifts resulted in Skövde (opposition) penalties". Later, in the final summation, it goes on to comment "it is still the single greatest value to observe how Quist's play lifts the whole team".
True that he is still playing two divisions below the Elite Series, but perhaps this is one of those good character traits that might have sold him as a draft prospect.

Linus Omark has been on a bit of a tear recently. Linus' Luleå has been scrapping for points to get out of the Elite Series basement (sound familiar Oiler fans?). The last couple games he has been playing upwards of 18minutes and regularly registering 4- 5 shots per game. He has now 25 points (9G+16A) in 44 games, good for 44th overall in league scoring.

Former Oilers:
Mikko Luoma: The Finnish defenceman drafted 181st in 2002 played only 3 games for the Oilers in 2003-04. Too bad this big man never stuck in the organisation. He is having a career year on Sweden's best team, HV71 of Jönköping - 32 points in 44 games. His leadership is also evident; playing on average more than 22 minutes per game (tied for 5th highest in the league). He will play for Finland in this week's LG Hockey Games.

Dragan Umicevic: Trogdor The Burninator has put in 24pts (9G+6A) in 28 games for Södertälje since returning to Sweden from the Russian Superleague. The 2003 draft pick never played for the Oilers and the club cut ties with the right winger in June of 2007.

Kalle Olsson: Playing in the level below the Elite Series with Västerås, he has equalled his 2006-07 point totals (31) in 6 fewer games. Västerås is close to the top of the Hockey Allsvenska and if they can finish among the top 3, will have a chance for promotion to the Elite Series. Olsson was released from the Oilers organisation in 2007.

Fredrik Pettersson: The 2005 draft pick and former Calgary Hitman was released from the Oilers organisation and returned to Gothenburg and his native team, the Frölunda Indians (no pun intended). Still young (20yrs), Fredrik is getting 4th line minutes in Frölunda, on average 7:41 per game, but is a solid +4 (5th best on his club). His scoring has often been important goals, à la Fernando Pisani type.

The Swedish Elite Series is on a 10 day break during which Sweden will host the LG Hockey Games - an tournament featuring Sweden, Russia, Finland and the Czechs.

There are 11 games left in the Elite Series season and the standings remain extremely tight. The top 8 teams make the playoffs, while the bottom two face a relegation series against teams from the Allsvenska (Ed Belfour's Leksand among those). With only 4 points separating 2nd-6th place and 4 points among 8th to 11th, the month of February should make for some interesting hockey.

Schremp Brings His Dangle

Shouldn't we refer to him as Dirk "the Dangler" Schremp?

Bandy About Mongolia

A picture from the Swedish Bandy league final in front of 26 000 people in Uppsala. March 2005.

Yesterday in Moscow was the first day of World Championship matches in what is Sweden’s second most popular sport played on ice.

Canada opened the Bandy World Championships with a convincing 6-0 win over Mongolia. Yes, Mongolia!

Today was another convincing win over Holland, 6-1.

Along with Canada in the "B" group (tier 2) is the aforementioned Mongolians and Dutch, as well as other powerhouse nations (sarcasm) like Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and the US of A.

Bandy is a sport that, equipment-wise, looks like hockey but, rules-wise, is much more like soccer. Eleven players, in positions similar to soccer, skate on a playing surface, akin to a soccer pitch, while carrying sticks and chasing a little orange ball.

My uneducated guess would be that Bandy was invented by the crazy nomads of Siberia. In truth it was the Brits. It is certainly a refreshing winter sport, if today we were living in 1908. Nowadays though, there are few places where people will willingly stand outdoors for 90 minutes in the dead of winter squinting after a tiny, fast-moving orange dot. In fact, Uppsala's team, IK Sirius rarely draws more than 500 spectators.

That said, I like bandy. It is like watching Woody Allen films; it employees a lot of technique (sometimes beyond the eye of the casual observer), is often of high quality and intelligent, and is enjoyed by a small, but unique group of aficionados. However, that comparison requires two corrections: it is outdoor and it moves fast. So, to summarize, bandy is like watching Woody Allen films in fast forward, standing outside, at a drive-in, in winter. And therein lies why it will not catch on.

Nevermind the fact that it is a poor spectator sport, Bandy has too much disparity. It has the goal of becoming an Olympic sport, but the gap between a Group A team, like Sweden, and a Group B, such as Canada, is cavernous. It would be like Canada facing Mexico or Iceland in hockey. Parity is many developmental years away. Olympic competition would seem a bit ill-conceived, or rather pre-conceived if one were to predict a winner - Russia, Sweden or Finland (much, I would note, like the US, Canada and Sweden in women's hockey).

When it comes to sport in general, whatever the sport, I will cheer for Canadians. More to it, cheer for Canada extra loud when they are the underdog. In this case, a bunch of Winnipeggers have travelled around the world with one main goal: beat the US. If they do so, and can win Group B, we will have a chance to get annihalated next year in Group A.

Like Woody Allen's 30 years of undergoing psychoanalysis, Bandy too will continue to feel undervalued as an illegitimate little brother to ice hockey. I would enjoy seeing Canada, or some other nation, make in-roads internationally and jump into Group A with some authority, but that is unlikely. For now we are left to achieve moral victories over those mongrels from Mongolia or tulips from Holland.

Hockey Notes: Jonas Almtorp has scored a point! Break out the champagne... or maybe just some Ginger Ale. He assisted on a Tim Sestito goal in a game (his 17th AHL game) versus the Worchester Sharks last Saturday.