{"id":484182,"date":"2026-02-19T00:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484182\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T00:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:57:07","slug":"team-sweden-left-with-bitterness-and-heartache-after-ot-olympic-ouster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484182\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Sweden left with ‘bitterness and heartache’ after OT Olympic ouster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quinn Hughes<\/a> ended it with a goal 3:27 into overtime, a perfect shot from between the circles past Markstrom\u2019s glove, vanquishing Sweden\u2019s joy and hope and belief, bringing the cruel reality into the picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me personally it\u2019s really hard to find words,\u201d Sweden coach Sam Hallam said. \u201cThe anticipation and expectations coming to the Olympics, the buildup, all preparations, all the emotions to it, the pride, you want to make the best out of it, especially you want to make your country proud. Extremely small margins here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even worse, Sweden went through it all with one of its heart and soul leaders in uniform and on the bench but unable to play.<\/p>\n

Victor Hedman<\/a> sustained a lower-body injury<\/a> in pregame warmups and could not play.<\/p>\n

Hallam said the coaching staff briefly thought about replacing Hedman in the lineup with Rasmus Andersson<\/a>, who was scratched, but since they had seven defensemen dressed, including Hedman, they would go with it and use the healthy six.<\/p>\n

Hedman was on the bench the entire game, the 35-year-old knowing this would be his one and only Olympics and then watching it all evaporate without the ability to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalk about a heartbreaker,\u201d Landeskog said. \u201cWe knew there was no place he\u2019d rather be than on the ice competing with us. Forced to have to sit out, yeah, I was hurting for him. I really was and I still am. I know how long he\u2019d been working toward this and looking forward to this. Yeah, that [stinks].\u201d<\/p>\n

It all does for the Swedes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can say it\u2019s just hockey, but that\u2019s not true — it\u2019s our life,\u201d Hallam said. \u201cThat\u2019s the way it is. So, it\u2019s a loss that\u2019s tough to carry. Nobody is severely ill. There\u2019s worse things in life. But this is something I know I\u2019m going to carry with me as the same kind of feeling like something really bad happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quinn Hughes ended it with a goal 3:27 into overtime, a perfect shot from between the circles past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-484182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}