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So the Allsvenskan is the Swedish 2nd tier league, and Boston, not sure what they’re going to do with all their AHL/ECHL talent, has allowed for mass-loaning. One of those talents is Oskar Steen, who’s played pretty well for his Umea, Sweden based IF Björklöven, or Löven, if you’re a fan. Steen for his part has been playing really well for a strong Allsvenskan team! He has 15 points in 16 games, all but 4 of those being goals. Good for him!
But today, he wasn’t with Lovens, as he’d been called to return to Boston. But that’s okay, Lovens is 2nd in the Allsvenskan, and playing against a pretty moribund team in Mora IK. Your typical “Have vs. Have not” sort of game. By any metrics, if Björklöven lost this, it was their game to lose. And then something so unusual happened that the league, the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation, and one of Sweden’s bigger sportbet companies, has gotten involved.
What happened was this: Björklöven scores the first three goals of the game in the first period, and then Mora, who are not a good scoring team, scores the next seven in a game Björklöven was so favored to win and just...didn’t...that there is now accusations that Björklöven in fact fixed this game, and others previously due to reports of unusually high penalty minutes that didn’t involve harming another player.
Björklöven was up 3-0 after the first period at home and surrendered the next seven goals. So much money was bet on Mora that the odds changed in unusual ways and the game was eventually removed from many betting sites.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) December 14, 2020
Björklöven-Mora odds ahead of the game
— Robin (@R_Fredriksson) December 14, 2020
1: 1.30 X: 6.00 2: 7.50
Odds when Björklöven was up 3-1
1. 1.70 X: 3.75 2: 4.25
So much money was being put on a Mora comeback, that you got better odds on Björklöven winning when they were up two goals than you did before the game.
The best we have for evidence is fans complaining (always a great source of info), and people who took gifs of the goals scored and while some seem perfectly fine, others seem...well...
Oskar Stål Lyrenäs reducerar för Mora mot Björklöven. #Hockeyallsvenskan #MoraIK pic.twitter.com/f44bLylSSu
— Anton (@antonj85) December 14, 2020
Svenska spel utreder Björklöven-matchen pic.twitter.com/UPJmQTUAWz
— C More Sport (@cmoresport) December 14, 2020
Look, I know Swedish Hockey is on big, olympic-level ice sheets and have more stringent rules that generally de-emphasizes open ice contact, but some of that looks at least a little like they were mailing it in. Most of the time you have to have something go tremendously wrong in order to get that level of clearance to the goal.
Björklöven, for their part, has welcomed the investigation readily, and doesn’t believe these allegations for a moment. But that’s for the league to decide on whether it worked or not.
Steen, for his part, probably landed at some point today at Logan, making him the smartest person to wear a Björklöven sweater this week by leaving that situation before it ever had the chance to involve him.
We’ll let you know just how big a bullet he dodged (or didn’t dodge) as the investigation continues.