Rasmus Dahlin Is 17-Years-Old And He's Going To Be The Best Player At The Olympics
Usually the World Juniors are the last time the majority of us get to watch a future #1 overall draft pick play before they actually get drafted. Unless you’re either a diehard junior hockey fan in Canada or you’re so dedicated that you’ll be up at 3am to live stream an Auston Matthews game in Switzerland, we see these future stars at the World Juniors and then we see them in June at the draft. But if there’s one good thing about no NHL players in the Olympics this year, it’s that we’ll get to see Rasmus Dahlin one more time in Pyeongchang next month with Team Sweden.
Pray for everybody’s ankles in Pyeongchang.
But seriously. Bring some extra tape to the tournament. We’ve already seen what Dahlin could do at the World Juniors against kids his own age. Now we’ll see him on the world’s biggest stage at the Olympics and the competition he’s going up against is either going to be equal to what he went up against in Buffalo or maybe even a little bit worse depending on who Sweden is playing against. I don’t mean to disrespect any of the guys who have been named to the Olympic teams so far. But a lot of them either never made it to the NHL or they had very brief stints in the NHL. The World Juniors is full of all the league’s future stars so I don’t feel like I’m that far off saying that it’s probably a better overall competition pound-for-pound than the Olympics will be this year.
17-years-old. Won’t turn 18 until April. And by the looks of this roster, he’ll leave Pyeongchang with an Olympic medal before he even gets drafted to the NHL. Not a big deal or anything. But yeah, considering the wheels on Dahlin and the mitts on Linus Omark
Sweden is going to be the most exciting team to watch at the Olympics this year. And who knows. Maybe if they win silver, Kim Jong-un can be lucky enough to catch a medal in the crowd.
