Canadian and American fans can be forgiven for their ignorance when it comes to the SDHL Qualification Round. Indeed, the league’s system of promotion and relegation, so common in the rest of the world, is almost unheard of in North American professional hockey, where owners buy their team’s way into a league and then stay there, regardless of performance. In Sweden, missing the playoffs can have truly dire consequences.
Sweden’s top league, the SDHL, features ten teams that play a regular season of 36 games each. The top eight ranked teams go on to compete in the playoffs, but missing the playoffs is not the end of competition for the teams ranked ninth and tenth. Those teams must pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and prepare to fight for their lives in the SDHL Qualification Round.
Sweden has a second-tier league called NDHL-DamEttan comprised of 26 teams that are gradually whittled away over the course of the season until only two remain. Those two teams earn the right to play against one of the bottom two SDHL teams in a three game series for the chance to compete in the top league the following season. Confused yet? Rest assured, you are not alone. Cognitive dissonance aside, this system is a thrilling, and at times heartbreaking, way to determine which clubs deserve to compete among the country’s best every year.
HV71 finished the SDHL season ranked ninth out of ten teams, and elected to play the NDHL’s Södertälje in their qualification round. “Elected to play?” Yes. The ninth ranked SDHL team chooses which of the two NDHL qualifiers they want to play against. The stakes are high and choosing the wrong opponent can have disastrous consequences. When the SDHL’s AIK lost their Qualification Round to Skellefteå last season, it triggered a mass exodus of players from the team. Top talents, of course, prefer to play in the top league, and players young and old departed for greener pastures. Teams without stars struggle to win, teams without wins struggle to raise sponsorship money, and teams without money cannot attract new stars. Relegation can thus send a team into a years-long spiral from which it is very difficult to recover. It’s all quite brutal, but also enthralling, like watching a Sir David Attenborough documentary about lions on the serengeti, where faltering means certain death.
Leksand finished last in the SDHL, and thus gets no choice: HV selected Södertälje, so Leksand must play Färjestad, a team built for promotion. Both SDHL Qualification Round series promise to be thrilling, and will, regardless of the outcome, have a great impact on the women’s hockey landscape in Sweden, and Europe, next season.
Stay tuned, as THN will publish previews of each SDHL Qualification Round series, including players to watch and predictions, shortly.