Photo: Bildbyrån
Chris Abbott leaves HV71 for the Carolina Hurricanes after the season.
TV4 expert Sanny Lindström thinks that the club managed the whole thing really well.
– Now everything is being demolished – this is really bad from HV71, he says in TV4 Play.
The news hit like a bomb on Wednesday. HV71’s newly appointed general manager Chris Abbott40, has landed a dream job within the NHL team’s Carolina Hurricanes organization and is leaving this spring. It was a big surprise to many, including Abbott himself.
“Surprise and shock”
Although he signed a three-year contract with HV71 just now, he will leave after just one year.
“I feel incredibly strongly about HV71 and therefore it has been a difficult decision for me. At the same time, it is a great chance to get a leading role in an NHL club and I did not want to miss that chance”, writes Chris Abbott in a message on the club’s website.
– It was a huge surprise and a shock. It was nothing that we saw coming at all, neither did Chris. But if you get such a great offer, anyone would probably choose to accept it, says Anna-Lena Isakssonchairman of HV71, to Jönköpings-Posten.
READ MORE: Sanny Lindström’s wonderful Brynäshån that makes the whole of hockey Sweden laugh out loud: “Haha, love this!”
Sanny Lindström’s harsh words
One who thinks this is deplorable in every way is the old SHL player Sanny Lindström44, now a hockey expert on TV4 Play. In the channel’s studio broadcast on Thursday – when HV71 defeated Leksand in the bottom battle – he saw the club’s way of handling it all.
– The more I have marinated this, the more unprofessional it becomes for me that HV71 chooses to give Abbott a clause to leave after one year on his contract. Now everything is razed – this is really bad from HV71, he says.
Sanny Lindström does not believe that any of the top clubs in the SHL would have agreed to let their most important person within the organization leave after just one year. He thinks it is an unprofessional decision.
READ MORE: The Americans choose the SHL’s ugliest club logo – hockey fans in the USA are brutally honest: “It’s terrible”
– Färjestad had not done it, Växjö had not done it, Skellefteå had not done it, Frölunda had not done it. It would not have been acceptable to give the most important person in the entire association a clause after one year – it is incredibly poorly managed, he says.
What do you think of the whole situation with HV71 and Chris Abbott? Did they do the right thing? Feel free to write a comment on Sportbibeln’s Facebook page.
Share