Should Filip Gustavsson have started against Finland?

It was a difficult loss for Sweden’s men’s hockey team on Friday, dropping a 4-1 effort to Finland in the preliminary round at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.

The Swedes, who needed to dig deep in the third period against Italy in a 5-2 win on Wednesday, weren’t able to generate much offense against a pesky Finnish squad, despite outshooting them 35-23. Swedish goaltender Filip Gustavsson gave up three goals, including two in the first period that put his team behind.

The question now becomes: Does Sweden look elsewhere in net when they face Slovakia on Saturday?

On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss whether Gustavsson should have started against Finland, and who may go in the crease against the Slovaks.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Filip Gustavsson was not that good in the first game against Italy, giving up a couple of stinkers. And yet, they give him a shot at redemption against Finland, and listen, he made some nice saves, especially late in the game when they were already chasing it, but it was too little, too late.

You look at some of those goals he gave up today, and it’s just not good enough.

Carter Hutton: No it’s not good enough. You circle back to the first game, and in my opinion, and it was two-on-four to start the game, and that let Italy stay in the game. Sweden was able to take the game over and do what they had to do, but that was against team Italy.

Today, it was two-on-six in the first period, so again, it’s a slow start. That starts to change the way you play. I’ve talked about this before: When your goaltender is fighting it and you’re trying not to give up chances, you can’t be thinking like that, and that’s what you’re seeing now.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…