Swedish Season Kicks Off This Weekend: Who Will Topple the Carlstad Crusaders?
[tps_header]Kristianstad Predators[/tps_header]
This will be the third year that head coach Jon Walker leads his team into the Swedish Super Series. After demonstrating improvement in the previous two years, making the playoffs last season, Kristianstad seems ready to take the next step and challenge the elite three.
Coach Walker’s pass crazy offense will again be led by Philip Juhlin, the Swedish-American signal caller who has truly matured and grown into his role. As the second leading quarterback in the country in 2014, he will again have an outstanding group of receivers in Marcus Johnsson, Benjamin Hörnquist, Sorin pandrea and Mattias Mårtensson.
The Predators’ ground game has not matched their aerial game but both Timmy Göransson and Anders Larsson have shown flashes of what they can do. The group of offensive linemen who will make the holes for those two running backs include import Bubba Rylance and Serbian Nemanja Graovac. Charles Ryan returns and will play both on offense and on the defensive line.
The Predators’ secondary played well in 2014 and this year the same group of Aklexander Nilsson, Markus Persson, Robin Dahl and veteran Magnus “Krutas” Hansson will patrol the defensive backfield. Sacarias Hörnquist and Tommy Moström will leading the linebacking group while Albin Dahl, Charles Ryan and Gustav Svensson will play leading roles on the defensive line.
The Kristianstad U19 squad won the Swedish championship and there is no doubt coach Walker will look to those talented group of rookies to step up in 2015, among them Adam Bloom.
The Predators have the shortest roster in the Super Series this year – 30 players – so it remains to be seen whether the two-way players, and there will be many of them, will be able to survive the punishment for an entire season. The club made the playoffs last year and could well do so again this year. As long as they stay healthy.
