All thoughts today go to the horrible tragedy of the Lokomotiv Jaroslavl hockey team, and especially the Swedish goalkeeper Stefan Liv. Stefan became 30 years old and he leaves a wide and two children behind him. Stefan will be remembered as a true legend to all Swedish hockey fans. Rest in peace and know that we are thinking about you.
On another note (even though this has nothing to do with AIK), how will KHL handle this disaster? A whole squad is gone. Will they copy NHL's system of an "extension draft", where Lokomotive would get the chance to recruit players from other KHL teams? Or will they solve it in some other way?
And in to something positive in all this devastation, AIK are playing Skellefteå in the second to last preseason game tomorrow. Elitserien is really getting close! Six days to go...
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Tuesday 6 September 2011
7 days...
As the title says, there's seven days left to the elitserie permier and nine days till AIK's first game against Timrå.
The Elitserie tickets were released on monday this week (05/09) and surprise, surprise, Ticnet crashed... Ticnet is the company handling all the ticket sales for hockey games in Sweden. The very clever people working there of course decided to put all these tickets out for sale at the same time. This resulted in not many people being able to buy tickets, and their servers being down for several hours. However, AIK have not released their tickets for this years first derby. The two Stockholm teams have an agreement to give some of the ticket sales to the other team when when they play at home, and vice versa. AIK will release their 1300 tickets tomorrow the 8th of september at 10 am. I'm hoping their are still a few left when I get home in the evening, otherwise I'll probably go mental...
AIK are playing their next preseason game against Skellefteå AIK on Thursday (09/09) at 7 pm. The game is played up in northern Sweden, thank good they're broadcasting it on TV so I don't have to travel up there... With enough players back and fit for fight we should have no trouble winning, Skellefteå did make it to the final last year and finished third in the league. But their troop is strongly decimated this year, they lost a few young talents to NHL. Among them David Rundblad, who I reckon will grow to be a fantastic player, even though he has a VERY diffrent style of playing. You might have noticed something with the name, Skellefteå AIK... Yes, they have copied us, in everything! Even their logo is basically a rip-off from ours. And can you guess their colours? Black and yellow.
I'll be back with a report from the game against the copycats of the north.
The Elitserie tickets were released on monday this week (05/09) and surprise, surprise, Ticnet crashed... Ticnet is the company handling all the ticket sales for hockey games in Sweden. The very clever people working there of course decided to put all these tickets out for sale at the same time. This resulted in not many people being able to buy tickets, and their servers being down for several hours. However, AIK have not released their tickets for this years first derby. The two Stockholm teams have an agreement to give some of the ticket sales to the other team when when they play at home, and vice versa. AIK will release their 1300 tickets tomorrow the 8th of september at 10 am. I'm hoping their are still a few left when I get home in the evening, otherwise I'll probably go mental...
AIK are playing their next preseason game against Skellefteå AIK on Thursday (09/09) at 7 pm. The game is played up in northern Sweden, thank good they're broadcasting it on TV so I don't have to travel up there... With enough players back and fit for fight we should have no trouble winning, Skellefteå did make it to the final last year and finished third in the league. But their troop is strongly decimated this year, they lost a few young talents to NHL. Among them David Rundblad, who I reckon will grow to be a fantastic player, even though he has a VERY diffrent style of playing. You might have noticed something with the name, Skellefteå AIK... Yes, they have copied us, in everything! Even their logo is basically a rip-off from ours. And can you guess their colours? Black and yellow.
I'll be back with a report from the game against the copycats of the north.
Saturday 3 September 2011
I just realised it's exactly two weeks to the away premier against Färjestad. Last year we played the 9 times, losing 9 out of those times. You could easily say that they're a nightmare for us. I can only hope we beat them this time to break a very bad trend. But if we manage t get all our players ready we should stand a good chance. Sure, FBK won the gold last year, but they have lost a few key players, like Dick Axelsson who went to MoDo, and their first keeper Alexander Salak.
I still haven't booked my trip down to Karlstad, but I'll get on it once I get back to Stockholm. Bus trip back and forth plus ticket to the game: 300kr. Which is a great price considering the trip is about four hours each way and a game ticket usually costs 150 kr.
I also that more than 16 000 tickets have been sold for the football derby against Djurgården on the 19th. Hopefully we can get an audience of about 30 000, since this is a game where AIK are going for Europa league, and Djurgården are in the risk zone of being relegated. Thank god I'm an AIK fan! The hockey derby tickets, being played the next day on the 20th, will be released tomorrow the fifth of september. I reckon it'll be sold out so I'm getting my ticket as soon as I can!
And just to finish off, Mohammed Bangura scored Sierra Leone's second goal, for the result 2-1 in the 89th minute. Once again showing what an amazing player he is. I really am gutted we didn't get to keep him for the rest of the season, but no blame on Mohammed, he has my full respect after saving us from relegation las season, and being a massive part of this years success which will hopefully lead to playing in Europe next season. Gold is still technically possible, but I wouldn't get my hopes up... I'll try to get a league table in here tomorrow, so you can judge our chances yourself!
I still haven't booked my trip down to Karlstad, but I'll get on it once I get back to Stockholm. Bus trip back and forth plus ticket to the game: 300kr. Which is a great price considering the trip is about four hours each way and a game ticket usually costs 150 kr.
I also that more than 16 000 tickets have been sold for the football derby against Djurgården on the 19th. Hopefully we can get an audience of about 30 000, since this is a game where AIK are going for Europa league, and Djurgården are in the risk zone of being relegated. Thank god I'm an AIK fan! The hockey derby tickets, being played the next day on the 20th, will be released tomorrow the fifth of september. I reckon it'll be sold out so I'm getting my ticket as soon as I can!
And just to finish off, Mohammed Bangura scored Sierra Leone's second goal, for the result 2-1 in the 89th minute. Once again showing what an amazing player he is. I really am gutted we didn't get to keep him for the rest of the season, but no blame on Mohammed, he has my full respect after saving us from relegation las season, and being a massive part of this years success which will hopefully lead to playing in Europe next season. Gold is still technically possible, but I wouldn't get my hopes up... I'll try to get a league table in here tomorrow, so you can judge our chances yourself!
Friday 2 September 2011
AIK - Almtuna 02/09
So here's the update I promised. Unfortunately I couldn't attend today's game, since I'm not in Stockholm this week-end, but I followed the twitterposts with great enthusiasm!
The always magnificent Swedish national football team played Hungary in a must win game earlier this evening, colliding with the hockey game. So a modest number of about 200 fans made their way to Hovet earlier on this evening. The injury situation in the team hadn't really improved, but it had rather gotten worse... Today 10 ordinary players were ill, injured, or in other countries. And Almtuna being our cooperative club, three of our most promising youth talents were today playing for them. Five talents from AIK will be spending this season playing first team hockey in Almtuna.
But even with a majorly decreased troop, AIK took the lead no less then three times, only to lose it just as many times. The blame can't be put on Markus Svensson though, our 2nd keeper, who had a great game. He really showed that he wants to compete with Elitseriens best goalie Viktor Fasth. Anyway regulation time finished 3-3 after Patric Blomdahl, one of the Ahström twins, and the new recruit Tobias Viklund all scored. Almtuna then won the game in the penalty shoot-out, unfortunately.
Even though it ended with a defeat, it's good to know our team can still score even with almost half the team not playing. So overall I'm pleased. Once we have all our players available, I can't see any team we should have trouble beating with this years squad. AIK gold 2lax12! (lax meaning thousand, see the famous tatoo Martin Mutumba got a few days before playing the final game 2009, securing the gold)
The always magnificent Swedish national football team played Hungary in a must win game earlier this evening, colliding with the hockey game. So a modest number of about 200 fans made their way to Hovet earlier on this evening. The injury situation in the team hadn't really improved, but it had rather gotten worse... Today 10 ordinary players were ill, injured, or in other countries. And Almtuna being our cooperative club, three of our most promising youth talents were today playing for them. Five talents from AIK will be spending this season playing first team hockey in Almtuna.
But even with a majorly decreased troop, AIK took the lead no less then three times, only to lose it just as many times. The blame can't be put on Markus Svensson though, our 2nd keeper, who had a great game. He really showed that he wants to compete with Elitseriens best goalie Viktor Fasth. Anyway regulation time finished 3-3 after Patric Blomdahl, one of the Ahström twins, and the new recruit Tobias Viklund all scored. Almtuna then won the game in the penalty shoot-out, unfortunately.
Even though it ended with a defeat, it's good to know our team can still score even with almost half the team not playing. So overall I'm pleased. Once we have all our players available, I can't see any team we should have trouble beating with this years squad. AIK gold 2lax12! (lax meaning thousand, see the famous tatoo Martin Mutumba got a few days before playing the final game 2009, securing the gold)
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