Penguins’ Erik Karlsson drops brutal Sweden Olympics assessment after elimination originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

A medal was the bare minimum expectation for Team Sweden at the Milano Cortina Olympics. Coach Sam Hallam had one of the most talented teams on paper because it was filled with NHL players. However, things did not go their way as Quinn Hughes broke hearts with an overtime goal to send them home. Clearly, Erik Karlsson was not pleased with how their campaign ended. The Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman did not mince words after the game.

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Winning opportunities in Milano Cortina turn into heartbreak

The game against Team USA was fairly even. Everyone on Sweden was managing to contain the Americans even without Victor Hedman among their lines. Mika Zibanejad kept the offense alive while Karlsson and Gabriel Landeskog made sure that no one got past them. Unfortunately, a single mistake could snowball and have devastating effects in the Olympics.

This is exactly what happened as Sweden and USA’s battle to reach the semifinals had razor-thin margins. All it took was for Hughes to get past them once and their medal hopes would be halted. This exact scenario played out and the Penguins veteran bared his emotions, via Dan Rosen of NHL.com.

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“We didn’t make it easy on ourselves. I don’t think that we reached the potential we were hoping for right off the start. We had to fight for everything. We tried to make it a positive thing. Today, it was a tough game out there. They played really well. They’re a very good team. But we gave ourselves a chance to win this game and it stinks losing in overtime on a day where it’s do or die,” Karlsson declared.

When all the numbers are crunched, Sweden will finish seventh among all competitors in the Milano Cortina Olympics. Since the 1920 Olympics at Antwerp, the three crowns have not finished less than fifth. Unfortunately, this very same record was broken when they went up against Team USA. In fact, this is their worst record of all time in the Olympics.

A lot of these faces will no longer be available when the 2030 games arrive. The reality that the Penguins defenseman and other veterans only got to play in one Olympics throughout their whole careers makes this defeat more gut-wrenching.

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