Catching up with Team Sweden coach Sam Hallam
The Red Wings won 6-2, turns out I was sitting next to the coach of Team Sweden the entire time.
The Detroit Red Wings cranked the Seattle Kraken 6-2 in the squid bowl on Sunday.
Detroit led 4-0 less than eight minutes into the first period and effectively cruised to their seventh straight win, moving within two points of a wild card spot.
Because of the foregone conclusion of the game, I was able to spend a bit more time chatting with my neighbor in the press box, Team Sweden head coach Sam Hallam, who was in town to watch Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond in person.
“I was in Pittsburgh yesterday and it was a 5-0 game (against Ottawa),” Hallam said with about two minutes remaining. “Would have been nice to come and watch an actual tight game.”
Hallam is in his third year as the coach of Team Sweden — it’s a full-time job unlike USA Hockey and Hockey Canada — and is starting his prep for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off in February, the first “best-on-best” international hockey tournament since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
Hallam was spending a quick day in Detroit, watching this game, and then doing a bit of a tour of the NHL this before heading back to Sweden on Friday. He said his next stop this week was Philadelphia, where the Flyers host the Florida Panthers — and Gustav Forsling — tomorrow night. As noted before, he was in Pittsburgh earlier this weekend.
We naturally chatted about Raymond, who Hallam described as one of the young Swedish players that is part of the country’s long-term plan beyond just this Olympic cycle.
Hallam said that Team Sweden, with such a short tournament and just two practices before playing Canada, wanted to go with NHL experience, but it was important to have long-term foundational pieces like Raymond and Leo Carlsson.
“I think you can only do so much, you have to play the best players and put them in a position to succeed, with just two practices, you kind of have to see what you can do right away,” Hallam said. “It’s about being able to win two games out of three and then you are in the final.”
There was never a question of whether Raymond would make the team, Hallam said, but he was particularly impressed with how Raymond has produced and taken a jump this season. Raymond entered Sunday on pace for an 88-point campaign, which would surpass his career-high of 72 last season.
The Red Wings also had four other Swedes in the lineup on Sunday — Jonatan Berggren, Simon Edvinsson, Erik Gustafson, and Albert Johansson — and Edvinson, to me, is the most intriguing from a long-term perspective for Team Sweden.
So I asked Hallam how close Edvinsson was to possible inclusion on Team Sweden.
“I think with our defense, particularly on the left side, we’ve got so much experience and players that have been there before,” Hallam said. “Take a Mattias Ekholm, when you have to kill a penalty or send out D for a 6-on-5 against Canada, that’s where you want that experience out there.”
Hallam did say that as Edvinsson grows in the NHL he’ll probably be on lists for the next Olympic cycle. While it wasn’t a certainty, much of the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off roster feels like a preview for what we’ll see at the 2026 Olympics.
Because of the full-time nature of the job, 4 Nations isn’t the only roster Hallam has to focus on at this point. There’s an international tournament in Sweden next month, held in Stockholm, where Hallam will pick the roster, but won’t coach the team because he’ll be headed to Montreal for 4 Nations.