To no one's surprise, Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond will represent the Swedes come February's 4 Nations Face-Off and return to men's international best-on-best hockey
To no one's surprise, Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond will represent the Swedes come February's 4 Nations Face-Off and return to men's international best-on-best hockey
On Wednesday afternoon, Team Sweden revealed its roster for February's 4 Nations Face-Off, and, to no one's surprise, Detroit Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond's name features on that list.
Raymond has represented his country twice previously at the senior level, playing for the Tre Kronor at the previous two IIHF World Championships. In 18 games across those two tournaments, Raymond has six goals and 11 assists for 17 points. He joins a Swedish forward corps featuring the likes of established stars like William Nylander, Elias Pettersson, and Filip Forsberg as well as emerging ones like Leo Carlsson.
Raymond fits somewhere between those two poles: "established" and "emerging." With 201 career points and a $64.40 million contract to his name, he has shown the NHL his bona fides, and the league has admired them, yet a sense lingers that his star hasn't stopped emerging.
Just last night in Boston, Raymond was, by a great distance, his team's best player. He scored twice—opportunistic goals, but goals that came from sound positioning and marksmanship so confident as to be free of the slightest hesitation. He also spent the entire night picking opponents' pockets and winning battles along the wall to take or keep possession. In a losing effort, Raymond played winning hockey. Early in the season, he struggled to find goals, but he never wanted for assists, and now he has seven goals in his last seven games. For the season, he has nine goals and 18 assists for 27 points in 25 games. When you put it all together, his place on the Swedish roster was never in doubt.
As for the tournament itself, while the 4 Nations has no history and thus nostalgia to draw on, it does have the advantage of being the first best-on-best men's international hockey since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. "I think [it's] a really big deal," Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said Monday, asked about how his players are viewing the event. "And so I think we'll be conscious on both ends of it. Obviously, very excited the individuals who will be part of that, but have some empathy for those guys that don't make it, because I think we have a lot of guys in our room that are either gonna be in or right on that line."
For Sweden, that description applies to defenseman Simon Edvinsson, who had an outside chance of cracking the roster, but the abundance of quality veteran Swedish D-men always left him a long shot.
Meanwhile, Olli Maatta—whom the Red Wings traded to the Utah Hockey Club on Oct. 30—will represent Finland at the event. The Swedish and Finnish rosters were announced together this afternoon, while the USA and Canada teams will be announced on this evening's TNT pregame show.
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