Växjö and Skellefteå have both been less convincing than expected in the playoffs. The championship is truly up for grabs, it seems.
And being a Luleå supporter you should root for all remaining teams to lose I think
Frölunda and Luleå simply don't like each other from several hard fought playoff series.
Skellefteå and Luleå are regional rivals.
The very commercial Växjö is kind of an anti-thesis to the more supporter-driven Luleå.
Between Örebro and Luleå there's been some sensitive transfers where Örebro has "stolen" prominent Luleå players like Emil Larsson and Robin Kovacs.
Pretty well put, besides Örebro — despite our shared history — being mostly an afterthought, haha.
Once Luleå has been eliminated, during any given playoff run, I’ve figured who I will root for from different angles.
I’ve often found myself rooting for — or at least take some pride in — my team losing to the eventual champions. Despite the antipathy, I know Frölunda has received this benefit from me. There was the Fagervall-coached, super physical Luleå team of big hulking grinders who at least stole a couple of semifinal games from the 2016 champions, for instance.
Skellefteå has almost always been impossible to root for. As our closest geographical rival, it’s very difficult to grant them the success they’ve had over the last decade. I’ve thus generally rooted for Växjö or Frölunda against them. However, following this year’s quarterfinals, I feel unable to root for the team that beat us nor to root against generally more hated rivals than the plastic Växjö team: I really don’t like their hockey utterly bereft of personality, and I can’t wish them well. That was the first time I felt that I’d rather see Skellefteå win, my mindset following the quarterfinals still being that this would be either theirs or Växjö’s year. Skellefteå and Frölunda’s brands of hockey are more fun to watch than Växjö, and they have some characters on their rosters. Feels kind of weird saying it, but I could grant Joel Lundqvist a final trophy. I did feel bad for him for a brief second after last year’s semifinals, and at this point I feel like yeah, good he got another go. And Skellefteå has low-key become kind of like Luleå in the sense that they’ve become more known for not getting it done and losing playoff series as favorites, than for their powerhouse teams, which is good. I also appreciate Frölunda for sending Färjestad on summer vacation, with Lennström a wonky loser who cost them game 7.
As for Örebro: I don’t know, would be kind of a curious upset. Haven’t watched them this playoff run, but they also play dull, trapping hockey as far as I am concerned. We beat them in five last year, but they were frustrating to play against. Until it was over, there was just a tiny sense of relief following each win, as opposed to celebration, because you knew to expect the same shit to play out next game with them possibly sneaking out a win from a tight box and two lucky counterattacks.
The one game they stole was decided by an Emil Larsson goal, that should have been denied since he blatantly tripped up the puck carrier to win the puck and get to the net. He soared up the list of punchable faces in the SHL (#1: Theodor Lennström) following that series, but I grant him that he’s become a pretty useful grinder/rucksack/pest with some scoring upside and clutchness since leaving Luleå, where he had one big goal-scoring season that made him a candidate for most overrated player in the league. I thought he was the third best player on his line, after Lundeström and Einar Emanuelsson, and 8 out of his 23 goals were scored on an extremely poor Karlskrona team, plus 4 against Mora: half his scoring came versus the bottom feeders, otherwise he was a wonky third wheel to Lundeström’s mature two-way game and playmaking, and Einar’s creativity.
There was almost zero attention paid to Larsson when the news came down that he and Kovacs had signed with them, since he was such a non-factor on that roster by that time. Kovacs, on the other hand, caused a nasty uproar. We’ve got some stupid-ass fans within our ranks. Wasn’t that the season where covid cancelled the playoffs? Despite rolling through the regular season, we were pretty blunt up front, so it felt like we needed him. It was very disappointing he was going to leave, but especially disappointing that some mouth breathers could harass the guy and the club into forcing a trade in the middle of a big season for us, where consistent scoring was something of the remaining issue. In the end, we did fine scoring by commuttee without either player, and we got Komarek home who solved our power play.
That being said, yeah, no. Niklas Eriksson/Örebro seem to glance a lot at Luleå for building rosters, and they’re boring, but I don’t think too much of them as opposed to others. Don’t know what I would think of them winning it all.