Malmö Redhawks invested heavily against the SHL – with Linus Klasen in the lead.
Then the team got 5,000 (!) Wallets thrown at them.
– It was me as captain who got the shit, says the profile in Släpp Sargen.
It was during the 2011/2012 season that Malmö Redhawks, backed by billionaire Hugo Stenbeck, invested heavily in the SHL. They had a brand new arena which at the time was one of Europe’s finest, and also with a real prestige acquisition that had just landed.
Opens up the contract
Linus Klasen was brought home from the NHL club Nashville Predator’s organization, and it was not directly cheap. According to Expressen, Klasen received more than SEK 20 million in salary – after tax, and it was of course with enormous expectations that he went to the Hockey Allsvenskan.
Just a year earlier, he had scored an insane 51 points in the SHL, but it was not the success for Malmö that many had hoped for. The Redhawks underperformed, and there were not a few times the team was sawn during the season. Linus Klasen remembers a shaky season, filled with criticism and sawing.
– It was me as captain who got the shit, it was me who had to face the failure. And I got shit every single day. I have a bag of newspaper clippings from Expressen, and it was written every day about Malmö, what a failure it was, says Klasen in the podcast Släpp Sargen.
The opponents’ beautiful mockery
But it was not just the newspapers that mocked. He tells what he experienced in various halls:
– In Tingsryd, Abba was played, and the song: “Money, money, money”. And then we came to Södertälje, and the first warm-up, then they probably sunk 5,000 on our half of the rink. They threw in silver stuff that you have ATM cards in. It was like lying on the ice, he says.
But Klasen did not then complain that he made a lot of money, and does not do so today either.
– There was little talk about that contract. The best contract in Swedish hockey history. It was my agent, but it was a market salary, right then.
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