In the 1990s, the Detroit Red Wings made their reputation by finding nuggets in Sweden at the end of the draft. We will think of Tomas Holmström (10e tower) or, obviously, to Henrik Zetterberg (7e tour).
Posted at 10:21 p.m.
The Montreal Victory could well have drawn from the Wings’ playbook. In September 2023, at the inaugural draft of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (LPHF), at 90e and last row of a long auction of 15 rounds, the general director Danièle Sauvageau pronounced the name of Lina Ljungblom.
On a day when Europeans made up less than 15% of the players selected, little attention was paid to Ljungblom, one of the youngest skaters available. And as we subsequently learned that her contract with MoDo, in the main Swedish league, required her to spend the season in her native country, many people moved on to the next call.
A little over a year later, it was the same Ljungblom (pronounced Yougne-Bloum) who fired the most powerful shots of Victory training, on this first day of the 2024 training camp. She, also, who skated without restraint and without complexes to the left of Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey as a member of the team’s main trio.
If the public, with the exception of connoisseurs of women’s hockey, knows very little about her, some of her new teammates already know her very well. Because although she has only just celebrated her 23rd birthday, she has already taken part in four world championships as well as the Beijing Olympic Games.
Poulin, Stacey, Erin Ambrose, Kristin O’Neill and head coach Kori Cheverie have already faced her a few times with the Canadian team.
“She’s very difficult to counter,” Ambrose testified Thursday after his club’s training. Every time I saw the number 25 on the ice, I knew I had to be alert. She did a lot of damage against Canada in our matches against her. »
The young woman particularly stood out in the spring of 2023. Her team forced overtime in the quarter-final against Canada at the World Championship, and she scored the first goal for her side that day. She finished the tournament with 10 points, including 7 goals, in 7 games.
It’s amazing to have him in our group today! Her shot and the speed with which she draws are impressive. His level of competition too.
Erin Ambrose, about Lina Ljungblom
His throw is, in fact, his weapon of choice. “She is capable of changing the angle without warning,” analyzed Marie-Philip Poulin. She’s a power forward who sees the game well.”
“She’s a special player,” added head coach Kori Cheverie. We felt that she could be a good complement to a trio that already has creativity, speed and two good shooters. Why not add a third? »
Nervousness
In the press scrum, the main person admitted to having felt a lot of nervousness before this first training session. Even if, having arrived in Montreal a few weeks ago, she had already been able to meet her future teammates.
This official baptism clearly took on a special dimension. “It means a lot to me,” she confirmed, in impressive English for an athlete who has never played on this side of the Atlantic – and who is therefore not yet used to the smaller northern ices. -Americans.
Nervous, we said? Let’s take her word for it. Because on the ice, nothing appeared. Although she played with Poulin and Stacey, two star attackers not only in the LPHF but on the international scene, she was like a fish in water.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Victoire head coach, Kori Cheverie
“She absorbs a lot of information,” Cheverie said. We’ve only been working together for three days, only one of which was on the ice, and the way she changed little things in her game in just one practice is remarkable. »
When drafting her last year, we were betting, despite her age, on recruiting a player capable of changing the course of a match, as much through her offensive touch as through her physical play, recalled the coach. Ljungblom asks for nothing better.
Having played with men until her late teens, she is in no way intimidated by heavy traffic. Even more so, the main women’s championship in Sweden has allowed body checking since 2022. That didn’t slow her down, as she finished third in scoring on the circuit last season.
“I’m good at fighting, I’m strong and I like to rush to the net,” she said. This is where I can help my team. Of course I like scoring goals, but it’s the other aspects of the game that will keep me in this league. »
She has been waiting for this opportunity for a year. She said, she tried to get out of her contract with MoDo, but in vain. “It was a little hard, because I saw how [la LPHF] It was big, she whispered. But I was trying to stay in the moment and do my best to be at the top of my game when I got here. »
On June 10, she finally signed her first contract with the Victoire, an agreement that binds her to the team for three years. And here she is now even closer to her goal, alongside the best, ready to take the next step.
We obviously won’t speculate on the shape of his career in the light of a single training session. But we have to admit that she left quite the first impression. Which is saying something when you remember that she is, after all, a deep draft player.
The Victory camp in brief
Some news from the Montreal team’s first day of on-ice training
Barnes absent, unsurprisingly
Injured in the “lower body” following a nasty fall last week in a match between Canada and the United States, American defender Cayla Barnes unsurprisingly missed the start of the Victory training camp. Montreal. Regarding the one she selected in the first round in the most recent draft, general manager Danièle Sauvageau said that the news was “encouraging”, but that no date had yet been set for a potential return to play. “It’s going better than it looked,” added the manager laconically, who did not want to specify whether she believed that Barnes’ absence would be counted in days or weeks.
The defense already damaged
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Dominika Laskova
In addition to Barnes, the Montreal defense will, in the short term, have to make do without Dominika Laskova and Amanda Boulier, who skated Thursday with forward Kennedy Marchment before the main group took possession of the ice. Laskova had surgery last season and her rehabilitation is clearly not complete – Marchment is in the same situation. As for Boulier, we understand that she was injured during the off-season. However, we do not know to what extent, since head coach Kori Cheverie did not even want to indicate whether she was affected in the “upper” or “lower” body. Difficult, in this context, to know if she has a chance of playing the inaugural match on November 30 – Danièle Sauvageau however indicated that Laskova and Marchment would not be there. Regardless, in the absence of Barnes, Laskova and Boulier, there are only seven defenders left in camp. If nothing changes, these could all end up in the formation from the start of the campaign. Note also that forward Catherine Dubois will miss at least the first week of camp due to a “health issue”.
Depth in attack
After almost six months spent analyzing his team’s first season and the short playoff series that followed it, Kori Cheverie identified two priorities to generate more offense in this new campaign: better control zone exits and more recovery. lost washers. In the first case, Cayla Barnes, “one of the best in the world at moving the puck,” will undoubtedly help. In the second, it is the “depth” added during the summer in the attacking group which will be used. With the expected arrival of Lina Ljungblom and Abigail Boreen in the top 6players who played as members of the main trios last year will be able to move down into the formation and give it better balance, says the coach. “It will allow us to breathe a little,” she summarized.
The revised international calendar?
The injury suffered by Cayla Barnes in a Rivalry Series exhibition game put the international calendar at the center of discussions Thursday. Already this year, two matches have been cut from this series – from seven to five – a change appreciated by the players and managers involved. However, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (LPHF) season will be interrupted three times in 2024-2025 by international breaks, in addition to exhibition matches played just before training camps. The meetings for the next year having been planned before the creation of the LPHF, we can expect changes after the 2026 Olympic Games, underlined Danièle Sauvageau. Furthermore, the very existence of the league could call into question the need to hold so many international matches, added Kori Cheverie.
Stacey doesn’t want to know
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Laura Stacey
The LPHF and video game studio EA announced earlier this week that Tour teams and players will be included in the game’s next update. NHL 2025. Unsurprisingly, the members of La Victoire said they were delighted by this new feature. This is particularly the case of Erin Ambrose, who devoted hundreds of hours to this game in her youth, but also of Laura Stacey. The striker sees in this innovation a logical continuation of the successes of the last year, during which the league broke “record after record” and shattered “glass ceiling after glass ceiling”. “We are excited about the progress we have made, and we just want to keep it going,” she continued. A reporter asked him to predict the rating that would be given to his avatar in the game. “I don’t know if I want to know!” “, she replied with a burst of laughter.
Matches on three networks
The LPHF announced the broadcasters for its matches in Canada on Thursday. In French, RDS (18) and - (6) will share 24 Victory matches like last year; however, the calendar this season has 30 in total. One of them has yet to be awarded, and it is the digital platform Prime Video, owned by Amazon, which will present the five other matches. The web giant will in fact offer “exclusive coverage”, in both languages, of the 16 league matches presented on Tuesdays, we can read in the press release published on this subject. In the playoffs, RDS will present one of the semi-finals as well as the final, and Prime, the other semi-final. In English, the pie will be divided between TSN, CBC and Prime.
