“We know it looks dark, but this decision was a bit of a shock,” coach Snorri Sigurbergsson told SVT Sport when Gothenburg announced they would be withdrawing from SDHL.
The announcement means that the series will be a poorer team, now nine instead of ten. Skellefteå, who has missed qualifying so far this season, has shown interest in taking over from Gothenburg. But this will not be the case, says the general secretary of the union.
– Moving a team during the current season is not relevant, from my point of view. I don’t see how that would be practically possible.
The Gothenburg message immediately created two questions to be grasped.
• How to manage the 13 games played by Gothenburg?
– If the respective teams have met them once, that result is taken into account or their matches are canceled altogether. I think it is closer to hand.
• How is the next qualifying handled now that there are nine teams in the SDHL?
– Our competition manager at the association will sit down with SDHL and input from NDHL and discuss options. I don’t want to anticipate that work.
Player situation – window open
The association hopes that decisions on the issues will be made as soon as possible, and has therefore decided that the women’s elite committee will coordinate the work together with the SDHL.
– Nothing is on fire now, but what will happen is that the games that Gothenburg would have played will be canceled. But of course we want to have some information as soon as possible. We have to respect the fact that SDHL as a league has partners we have to work with. The most important thing is that wise and good decisions are made, not when.
A third question that becomes obvious is what happens to the Gothenburg players. They also have a lot of imports from abroad.
– The first thing that needs to be addressed is the relationship between employer and employee. It is not managed by the association. But what happens when you have signed an agreement to play in SDHL and the club leaves, is that the agreement is broken and you are free to change clubs. And now the window is open until January 15, says Stark.
On its website, Gothenburg HC writes: “Players remaining in the federation can begin their work of finding new clubs to play for in Sweden or elsewhere.”
