When William Nylander plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs, he plays with Auston Matthews or Nazem Kadri. At the 2017 IIHF World Championships, he doesn’t have those sorts of centres to play with. The strength of the Swedish team is on defence.
Rikard Grönborg, the head coach, revealed his top two lines, and they are an attempt to spread out the scoring talent. Nylander has the most NHL points of any forward on the team, so he has to be a top six man.
In the games leading up to the WC, Sweden has been using Elias Lindholm and Victor Rask of the Carolina Hurricanes as the base of one line.