The Swedish Hockey League's two-time defending champions, Skellefteå AIK, once again won the regular season by a huge margin, re-qualifying for the Champions Hockey League in the process. Can any of the other teams in the league break their dominance in Swedish hockey?
by Henrik Lundqvist
In the summer of 2014, Skellefteå AIK lost many of the key players from their two previous championship seasons. Their seven highest scorers from 2013–14 found new clubs in the NHL, KHL and other league, so who would have expected their dominance to continue?
Regardless of what people might have thought, it has. Newcomers such as Andrew Calof, Patrik Zackrisson, Kirill Kabanov and Janne Pesonen helped the club to a comfortable regular season win 14 points ahead of the closest chalengers, Frölunda Gothenburg. The top scorer of Skellefteå was, surprisingly, defenceman Tim Heed. Last year the 24-year-old former Anaheim Ducks draft pick had one goal and four assists in 40 games – this season he had 10 goals and 27 assists to lead the team with 37 points. In net, Markus Svensson has maintained his number-one job, but backup Erik Hanses also got a lot of playing time, and played well.
| # | Club | GP | RW | OW | OL | RL | GF | GA | Dif | Pts |
| 1 | Skellefteå AIK (B) | 55 | 32 | 5 | 5 | 13 | 169 | 116 | 53 | 111 |
| 2 | Frölunda Gothenburg (A) | 55 | 23 | 11 | 6 | 15 | 145 | 120 | 25 | 97 |
| 3 | Växjö Lakers | 55 | 24 | 9 | 6 | 16 | 158 | 120 | 38 | 96 |
| 4 | Linköping HC (A) | 55 | 26 | 4 | 7 | 18 | 156 | 125 | 31 | 93 |
| 5 | HV71 Jönköping (A) | 55 | 25 | 6 | 5 | 19 | 145 | 141 | 4 | 92 |
| 6 | Örebo HK | 55 | 21 | 10 | 7 | 17 | 156 | 128 | 28 | 90 |
| 7 | Färjestad Karlstad (A) | 55 | 21 | 6 | 8 | 20 | 128 | 135 | -7 | 83 |
| 8 | Luleå Hockey (A) | 55 | 21 | 6 | 4 | 24 | 127 | 131 | -4 | 79 |
| 9 | Djurgården Stockholm (A) | 55 | 15 | 9 | 8 | 23 | 128 | 157 | -29 | 71 |
| 10 | Brynäs Gävle | 55 | 19 | 3 | 5 | 28 | 132 | 159 | -27 | 68 |
| 11 | Leksand IF | 55 | 15 | 3 | 6 | 31 | 116 | 179 | -63 | 57 |
| 12 | Modo Örnsköldsvik | 55 | 12 | 4 | 9 | 30 | 127 | 176 | -49 | 53 |
Who Skellefteå will face in the quarter-final is yet to be determined because the playoffs start with a preliminary round, in which teams placed seventh through 10th from the regular-season standings play best-of-three series for the last two quarter-final spots. This round features Färjestad Karlstad (7) facing Brynäs Gävle (10) and Luleå Hockey (8) against Djurgården Stockholm (9). Skellefteå will draw the worse-ranked winner of these two series in the quarter-finals, so it can be any of them except Färjestad. Second-placed Frölunda will face the higher-ranked preliminary survivor. The remaining quarter-final series are already known. The Växjö Lakers (3) will play Örebro HK (6) and Linköping HC (4) will play HV71 Jönköping (5). The preliminary round starts Saturday while the quarter-finals will get under way on Thursday, 12 March.
CHL finalist Frölunda finished second in the standings and is of course one of the teams that you can expect to go far in the playoffs. In both 2013 and 2014 Frölunda were eliminated in the quarter-finals but that won’t be accepted this time. The Gothenburg club led by head coach Roger Rönnberg last won the Swedish championship in 2005, so a new victory would be warmly welcomed by their many fans. Frölunda have the best attendance in the SHL with an average of 9,087 fans per home game – more than 1,000 more than any other club.
Before the season many experts expressed that Växjö were strong contenders for the title and their third-placed finish proves they are team worthy of consideration. Robert Rosén led the team in scoring with 23 goals and 21 assists while Cory Murphy (9+30) was the highest scoring defenceman of the league. Växjö will be the favourite against Örebro but the duo Derek Ryan and Martin Johansson must be stopped. Ryan was the league’s points leader with 60 (15+45) while Johansson was second in the league in goal scoring with 24 pucks behind opposing goalies.
The series between Linköping and HV 71 will be a battle between the two teams with the best power play – both 20.8 percent effective. Linköping also had the best penalty-killing with a staggering 88.8 percent. The Linköping and Jönköping clubs are also local rivals with only 130 kilometres between the cities. In the last game of the regular season, Linköping passed HV71 in the standings to get fourth place and home-ice advantage in the series. Either of these two teams could also be involved in the battle for the championship if everything works out well.
The two teams that didn’t make the playoffs, Leksand IF and Modo Örnsköldsvik, have to play best-of-seven series against teams from the second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan to remain in the SHL. Next season the SHL will expand to 14 teams and eight Allsvenskan teams are still remaining in the battle for promotion.
The teams that participated in Champions Hockey League this season definitely performed better in the SHL than the ones who didn’t. The CHL clubs finished in positions 1 through 5 and 7 through 9, while the non-CHL clubs were placed 6th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Of course, only six of those eight CHL teams are founding members. By finishing first in the regular season, Skellefteå have re-qualified, leaving one remaining spot for three clubs – Växjö, Örebo and Brynäs – to compete for. As the third-placed finisher, Växjö have the best chance of re-qualifying.
But who will win the championship in 2015? Can Skellefteå be beaten? Find the full playoff schedule and up-to-date results here at the league website.