PHOTO: Bildbyrån
HV71 has had a really tough start to the season.
Dick Axelsson guesses the main reason.
– They have under-delivered and under-performed quite significantly, he says to Sportbibeln.
It has been tough for several big teams in the SHL this season. And over time. In the last nine years, Växjö Lakers have won four titles. Before 2015, the club had zero. At the same time, the champions Djurgården have not won since 2001, and a club like Brynäs has seen brighter days.
Seeing the crisis law
In the SHL, it is now Färjestad that leads. At the same time, it has been a tough start for clubs like Frölunda and Rögle. The former hockey player Dick Axelsson can see a common thread for the struggling clubs.
– It has been these big teams that have been the best, the ones that have had the most money have won before. But now there have been more players from their own ranks, the junior ranks, who are often better than these dudes who have 300,000 kroner a month. It has become a power factor now, says Axelsson to Sportbibeln.
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Leksand is also doing well and is in eleventh place in the table.
– You look at Leksand, they try to recruit everything there is. The only way for them to get good players is to spend a lot of money. But it is beginning to be seen more and more in today’s society that it is not really the melody in hockey. Without that, we have to start investing more in our own ranks, because the players earn way too much for what they actually perform, says Axelsson.
Axelsson’s HV71 judgment
As recently as 2017, the HV71 won SM gold, and has won a total of five titles. This season, the club has started with eleven losses and four wins, and the team is now last in the SHL.
– After all, I had them as SM gold winners last year… That team is difficult, I kind of think that everything is there. The Nub (Kent Norberg) has been fantastic in Timrå before. But now that he has perhaps received a little too much money, there have been too many signings and too little continuity in the team, I think. It is exchanged a lot and so on. So he has lived a bit of a thief there, I think.
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With twelve games played got Tomas Montén leave the assignment as head coach in HV71. The replacement became club director Johan Lindbom.
But Dick Axelsson sees something else as the biggest reason for HV’s weak results so far.
– It’s actually these 20 players on the ice who have to do what has underdelivered and underperformed quite a lot, unfortunately, he says.
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