PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Imagine Jaromir Jagr and Peter Forsberg side by side on the ice.
A real wet dream for many hockey lovers around the world.
Now Inge Hammarström reveals how close it was to actually happening.
To many he is known as Börje Salmings pair horse when the duo moved to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1970s and wrote Swedish sports history. But Inge Hammarström had a much more successful hockey career than that.
Inge’s fine career
He represented both Timrå and Brynäs in the Swedish top flight and won a total of four SM golds. He then took the step across the Atlantic together with Salming and there were games in the already mentioned Maple Leafs and St Louis Blues for Hammarström.
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After his playing career, Inge started working as a talent scout for the Philadelphia Flyers for 19 years and then the Vancouver Canucks. He managed to find a number of promising players who became successful NHL players, but unfortunately the Swedish legend never got to win the Stanley Cup.
Forsberg & Jagr
Inge Hammarström was also present on the day the Flyers made one of the most notable moves of all time, when they traded away Peter Forsberg for Erik Lindros.
– Me and a French-Canadian scout were on our knees in front of Flyers owner Ed Snider and asked him not to make that three. I hadn’t just traded Peter for Eric. But we changed five players. It was completely unimaginable. It was hair-raising, says Inge in an interview with Expressen.
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Hammarström had a keen eye for talent on the ice and was early on the Czech icon Jaromir Jagr.
– I fought so damn hard for us to take Jagr, but they wanted a tough Canadian. I said: “Jagr is completely superior!”. No one is close to Jagr. But the Flyers chose Ricci, who was fit and won the Stanley Cup with Foppa in Colorado. But Ricci was no Jagr. I also fought hard for us to take Sergej Gontjar (who played over 1,000 NHL games and won the Stanley Cup), he says in the interview.
Imagine if the Swedish scout had succeeded in pairing the very Forsberg with the very Jagr and thus created one of the NHL’s most feared duos ever. Both are individually ranked among the very best NHL players in modern times and it would have been a wet dream for many to see both as teammates.
– Yes, we should have had them. And then we would have won the Stanley Cup for sure. I had many great years as a scout, but this sort of thing made the journey a bit difficult as well. I was told that the Flyers needed Lindros to be able to build a new arena. But if we had Jagr and Forsberg, people would probably have come too. In addition, the Flyers had sold out every single game since 1967 even before that, says Inge Hammarström to the evening newspaper.
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READ MORE: Mats Sundin takes out his absolute dream five of NHL Swedes of all time – and a current player manages to take a place
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