Don’t ignore Sweden for gold at the 2025 World Juniors

It’s Christmas Eve, which for some people means that Christmas is tomorrow. But for hockey fans, it means that we’re two days away from the start of the World Juniors.

While everyone expects a lot out of Canada and the United States in this tournament, Sweden has the potential to make some noise. With solid depth at forward, defense and goaltending, and relatively weak competition at the group stage, the Swedes are a strong contender for a medal, and may even upset Canada and the United States for the gold.

Steven Ellis joined Daily Faceoff Live last Thursday for their Next Wave segment to talk about the World Juniors, giving us a preview of why Sweden may have the depth to do some damage in the tournament.

Steven Ellis: Sweden is just a difficult team to beat. They’ve got three really good goaltenders. They’ve got probably one of the better defensive units. It’s not super flashy and not super skilled, but they play defense, and that’s what you kind of hope for from your defensemen.

Looking at Axel Sandin-Pellikka, he was great in this tournament last year. He has the opportunity to become the second two-time defenseman of the tournament winner. That’s incredible. Tom Willander, the Vancouver Canucks prospect, is very good. Theo Lindstein was great.

And then you look up front and they have so many good scoring options, including David Edstrom, who was recently involved in the Yaroslav Askarov trade. Victor Eklund, who is one of the top prospects for this year’s draft, potentially a top five player. Otto Stenberg was really good last year and is a St. Louis prospect.

So they’ve got really good depth at every position. Maybe not as much as Canada or the United States, but enough to compete for a medal.

You can watch the full episode here…