It dawns on me more and more how utterly useless Garpenlöv is as a coach. I know Swedish hockey has a small tradition to find the worst coaches they can find (except for gems like Rönnberg, I like him), but the national team? Hardy, BÅG, Montén and now Garpenlöv. Utter garbage. But Garpenlöv takes the cake. He willingly destroys the only combinations he has that actually works, he just not traditionally useless at picking the players. What he favours in players I have no clue about, because he keeps clowns and sacks players that can actually fulfill a role.
For example, destroying the Skellefteå line was an idiotic move. Kind of like BÅG leaving Holmström out of the ordinary lineup in 2006 and picking Hanulla ahead of Hedström or even leaving Ronnie Sundin (or whatever his name was) ahead of a reputational NHL defenseman.
Second of all, putting Lundeström in a 1st line role. What the hell was he thinking? He's a fringe NHL player. He's young and not overly talented, 3rd or 4th line, fine, but this? What the... he's not exactly an Elias Pettersson or a Zibanejad, is he? Talented snipers with a mediocre NHL center, what did he think would happen?
As an example, why not play Nils Lundkvist with his teammate in Luleå Erik Gustafsson? They are a very good D pairing together and they have chemistry. Instead we get Tömmernäs looking like a moron beside him. Gustafsson is better than Tömmernäs, so what is the problem? What is Tömmernäs even doing on the roster and how the hell did he become the captain? And that's just the start of the Garpenlöv headaches.
This all starts with the coaching and team selection. It was a clown show before the tournament even begun. You could imagine the federation would wake up after losing against GERMANY in an important international game, but no. That whole old boy club has to be cleaned out.
