Why does Sweden get more NHLers at the WHC than we do?
This season, 48 Finns got at least one NHL game. For Sweden, the figure was 101. Sweden also has roughly double the amount of established NHLers over us. It gets even more narrow if we leave the bubble players out of the figure. Out of those 48 Finns, 33 got a minimum of 30 games. For Sweden the same figure is 67.
In a best-on-best tournament, these figures are not so important, because all countries can only pick 25 players, and our top-shelf selection can rival that of the other top countries. In this spring carnival, however, those figures make a world of difference in player availability. Out of Sweden's mass, some will always be eliminated from the playoffs. To add insult to injury, our NHLers happen to be much more tightly grouped together. Out of the 33, 14 play in either Carolina, Florida, Dallas or Colorado. In fact, there were only two Finnish non-bubble players available this year who didn't cite one of the obvious reasons - injury or out of contract - Saros and Armia.
All of this also means that for Sweden, the competition for spots on best-on-best teams is much tougher. This adds the incentive of players joining when they can - gotta impress the coach. Our next best-on-best team could well be the best one on paper we've ever iced, but that team still very much builds itself. When Pennanen announces his selection for the four-team tournament around next Christmas, most of us can already list the names of 2 goalies, 6 d-men and 10 forwards it'll feature, barring injuries of course. And the names of the remaining players is largely cosmetics.
Okay, that's it for Sweden. But this doesn't explain the situation for countries with fewer NHLers than us, such as Czechia, Slovakia and Switzerland. At-least-one-game-in-the-NHL figures for them are 32, 10 and 10, respectively.
Here the difference could be that unlike NHLers, we have a very deep pool of quality Euro players to pick from. For these countries, the pickings in that regard are much slimmer. So these few NHLers are acutely aware that they are very much the difference-makers between their team being a step behind the elite and a medal contender. Ours? Well, everything they've seen tells them otherwise. And while I find it a frivolous thought that our top shelf NHLers find Jukka Jalonen disagreeable (might have been true in 2010, but hardly onwards), he has arguably been a big contributing factor to this.
And that's the story. We are in an unlucky spot: not that many NHLers so that a decent selection of them will be regularly available, and those that are do have a double-whammy reason to not see the annual WHC as that important - no need to compete for spots at upcoming best-on-bests, and nothing tells them they are necessary pieces when history is being written.
It's a strange trend, Finnish players don't actually care about this tournament anymore, and many of the other teams players seem to have much increased interest.
