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He also clarified why he might personally be happier with the trade than some:

–Adam [Larson] is Swedish and a really good player that I can play with just makes it better. In that way it was a good trade for myself.

As for that “egoboost”, Klefbom also cleared up comments about his own value to the team which might be taken as hubris:

Regarding the quote that many thought he was missed more than McDavid when they both were injured, Oilers defenseman want to emphasize that it was not his own idea.“There were some on social media and in newspapers wrote that I was missing more than him and I just thought it was very flattering. I do not in any way compare myself to him as a player and knows just how important he is to the club.”

Our original post on the story from earlier today follows the break:

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Taylor Hall “never played his best games against the tough teams”, Oscar Klefbom tells Swedish interviewer

Funny how tongues seem to loosen a bit when European players go home and do interviews in their native languages. Fans of the Edmonton Oilers have seen this in the past with the likes of Nail Yakupov and Linus Omark. The latest such comes from defenceman Oscar Klefbom, attributed with a controversial take on Taylor Hall in this revelation from Ola Winther of the website HockeySverige.se:

This tidbit was one part of a much longer interview with Klefbom, who also provided some comments on the state of his own health, a critical item going forward. More on that in a minute. Let’s start with quotes specific to the Taylor Hall trade for Adam Larsson, even as said quotes are somewhat garbled by the ever-adventurous Google Translate:

I think the team has improved. We already have so many promising forwards and we did not really have a peak reverse is rightare. I also think Adam gets a real breakthrough this year and hopefully I get the chance to play with him and forming chemistry.– At the same time, I understand the reactions. Taylor has been our best player in recent years, but it’s also hard to tell what he has contributed. He never played his best games against the tougher teams, which we really needed it. However, he was fantastic when we met the little worse law.

A request for translation from an actual Swede** has been placed, but let’s try to work through that. I’m guessing “peak reverse is rightare” might mean “top rearguard who shoots right” which at least fits the known facts. The first comment regarding Hall is complimentary enough, and also factual — Hall was the Oilers’ best player in recent years. But those comments about his play vs. the tougher teams compared to the “little worse law” are , shall we say, a little surprising. And lest we think something is lost in translation, we have the tweet up top, in English, from the author of the article.