Quinn Hughes ended it with a goal 3:27 into overtime, a perfect shot from between the circles past Markstrom’s glove, vanquishing Sweden’s joy and hope and belief, bringing the cruel reality into the picture.
“For me personally it’s really hard to find words,” Sweden coach Sam Hallam said. “The 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.”
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.
Victor Hedman sustained a lower-body injury in pregame warmups and could not play.
Hallam said the coaching staff briefly thought about replacing Hedman in the lineup with Rasmus Andersson, who was scratched, but since they had seven defensemen dressed, including Hedman, they would go with it and use the healthy six.
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.
“Talk about a heartbreaker,” Landeskog said. “We knew there was no place he’d 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’d been working toward this and looking forward to this. Yeah, that [stinks].”
It all does for the Swedes.
“You can say it’s just hockey, but that’s not true — it’s our life,” Hallam said. “That’s the way it is. So, it’s a loss that’s tough to carry. Nobody is severely ill. There’s worse things in life. But this is something I know I’m going to carry with me as the same kind of feeling like something really bad happened.”
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