The World Junior Championships are loaded with talent every year. This year, there are a few teams that are starting to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. It is usually the same suspects that do so every year.
Team Sweden is always one of those teams. They have been one of the best hockey countries in the world for a very long time. Every year, they ice good teams at every level of the game.
This year is no different but they are playing even better than we thought. People may expect Sweden to beat the lower-level teams but they did so in a dominating fashion in their first two games.
Their real test came on Friday when they had to take on Team Canada. Of course, this was always the likely collision course that could decide who wins the number one seed out of Group A.
Team Sweden has been one of the best teams at the World Juniors so far.
Sweden did the unthinkable, however, and they shut Canada out 2-0. It is one thing to beat them but they didn’t even allow a single goal. This is a good Canada team too who has run through their opponents up to this point as well.
The crazy thing is that Sweden has now played three games, won them all, and hasn’t allowed a single goal. That is an insane stat for a tournament that is already three games old.
They got this 2-0 win over Canada following a 6-0 win over Latvia and a 5-0 win over Germany. They are outscoring all of their opponents 13-0.
Sweden scores enough offense due to their skill but it is their awesome team game and goaltending that allows them to win without allowing goals.
They are going to close out their round-robin portion of the schedule with a big matchup against their biggest rival in Finland. We'll see if they can avoid giving up a goal for the fourth straight game.