Road to Sochi - Episode 4

A pride wounded coach, twins and the NHL's top scorer. Wheres the communality ? Right, they're all playing on Team Sverige. Episode 4 of our Road to Sochi featuring Loui Eriksson and Carl Söderberg.
To sum up the Swedish team in once sentence, it's trademarked by good goaltending in the person of Vezina Veteran Henrik Lundqvist , an explosive offense with the Sedin twins and the surprise of the season NHL's top scorer Alexander Steen.

Loui Eriksson has been part of this team for many years now, mainly because he was always playing for them at the World Championships due to early season endings in Dallas. Things have changed since he was traded to Boston alongside Reilly Smith for Tyler Seguin and Rich Peverley. Unfortunately, Eriksson is currently out with his second concussion this season. After beeing headhunted by John Scott earlier this season he suffered another hard hit from Brooks Orpik last week.

Eriksson has 14 points in 24 games this season and has yet to play a longer span without getting injured. He's the Bergeron clone on the 2nd line alongside the two-way master himself and Brad Marchand. To all those of you who say that Reilly Smith is the reason why the B's have won the deal, Bergeron has just 3 more points than Eriksson in 9 more games. It's the things they do at the back end, that makes players like Eriksson and Bergeron rare and essential for a team like the Bruins.

If Loui get's healthy for the Olympics (we could see him back in a B's jersey in January) he's supposed to play on a line with the Sedin twins, just like he did winning the gold medal at this years World Championship.

Nine long years, that's the amount of time it took for the Malmö native to get to the NHL. After beeing drafted 49th overall by the St. Louis Blues in the 2004 class Söderberg was traded to the Bruins in 2007 in exchange for goalie Hannu Toivonen. Despite beeing ranked second (4 goals, 6 points) on a strong Swedish team in the 2005 World Juniors, he didn't make the cut for an NHL roster or affiliated team. Instead, Söderberg stayed with his hometown team the Malmö Redhawks who were mainly playing in the second tier league.

The first step towards NHL happened in 2011 when he left his hometown club after 10 long years to join Linköpings HC in the Swedish Elite League. In his first season he became the team's second best scorer, yet still they missed the playoffs. Söderberg came back in a big way, ending up as the league's top scorer with 60 points in 54 games last season.

After his season ended with Linkopings HC's loss to Skelleftea AIK in the second round of the Elitserien playoffs the Bruins were determined on bringing Söderberg to Boston to help their floppy 3rd line.
Linköping and Söderberg agreed to the move, but the Swedish Hockey Federation blocked it, because they wanted him to represent Sweden at the IIHF World Championship.

With all this bullshit happening around him, Söderberg made it clear to Swedish coach Pär Mårts, that he won't play for Sweden at the World Championships, nor in the near future. The Hockey Federation then decided to end the drama and let him go to Boston, where he would play 8 games for the B's.
This season he's a key-stone on the reinvigorated 3rd line, recording 15 points in 26 games along side Chris Kelly and Reilly Smith.

Söderberg gave up his ability to play for his country in order to make a late debut in the NHL. Swedish coach Pär Mårts has decided to exclude him from the Olympic roster, although he's the perfect kinda guy for the international ice size. Sweden ... where aristocrazy is more important than performance.