Who's To Blame For Sweden's Early Exit In The Olympics?

Swedish hearts were broken on Wednesday when Team USA defenseman Quinn Hughes won the game in overtime.

While the Americans move on to the semifinal against Slovakia, Sweden head home.

The Swedes will be disappointed to go out in the quarterfinal, which is far earlier than the team was hoping for, and what fans were expecting from the gold medal contender.

Despite being eliminated by a strong USA team, Sweden's performance at these Olympics leads to the question: what went wrong?

It all started in their tournament opener against Italy when the concerns began to creep in. Sweden started on the wrong foot against the Italians, who took a 1-0 lead in the first five minutes.

While Sweden came back to win that game 5-2 and put up 60 shots, they weren't as dominant on the scoreboard as expected. They were then handed a 4-1 loss by their rivals, Finland, and Sweden has been behind the eight-ball ever since. Although they beat Slovakia, it wasn't by enough goals to win the group.

Throughout the tournament, there was plenty of uncertainty around coach Sam Hallam's decisions.

Some of those decisions include limited or no ice time for the 13th forward or seventh defenseman, including D-man Oliver Ekman-Larsson logging zero minutes against Italy and Filip Forsberg getting very few shifts early on. Furthermore, New Jersey Devils star Jesper Bratt didn't take a shift until the third period against Team USA on Wednesday.

Goaltender Filip Gustavsson, who started the tournament in net, was scratched against Team USA. He didn't give anything close to his best performances, with a combined .889 save percentage and 2.55 goals-against average against Italy and Sweden, and he eventually lost the net to Jacob Markstrom.

Aside from the raised questions by Sweden's coaching staff and spotty goaltending, there's another aspect to the team's downfall at these Olympics.

The Swedish roster is filled with players who are very similar in playing style. Semifinalists and co-favorites for the gold medal, Canada and Team USA, have rosters filled with players in all sorts of roles, such as playmakers, snipers, power forwards and two-way players.

But Sweden's forward group is loaded with playmakers and perimeter forwards. Players such as Elias Pettersson, Mika Zibanejad, Bratt, Rickard Rakell and others share a similar style of play. It leads to passive play and a limited number of high-danger chances, which isn't a recipe to win elimination games.

This was evident when Sweden faced Italy and Finland in the preliminary round. The same can be said of their performance in the quarterfinal against Team USA, when they trailed by one goal for about half the game.

That said, there are a handful of Swedish forwards who don't fall into the category of passive playmakers.

William Nylander and Forsberg would be on that list as players who are comfortable with taking the puck to the net or creating shot opportunities on their own.

However, on Wednesday, they combined for zero shots on goal, which was a major factor in their defeat by the Americans. Even right winger Adrian Kempe, a heavy shooter, was limited to one shot on goal in the quarterfinal (with another hitting the post).

And Pontus Holmberg, who was a surprise selection for the team and plays a two-way game lower in the lineup, played all five games and had zero points and a minus-two rating.

Ultimately, the personnel and style of play were simply not enough for Sweden to challenge for a medal at the 2026 Olympics, as many had expected.

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