2010 0929 A Visit and a Trip

Some more Off-Ice Training

This week my dad is here to visit the first time since I arrived here in Sweden. Coach Freddy and my dad drove up to Erik and I when we were walking home from school on Monday. This was a surprise to Erik and I. We went to go eat at Taby Centrum before coming home and going to hockey training. We ran over four kilometers in training before skating for 80 minutes with the older team. My dad is staying in a hotel and has been coming to the Svenssons' house in the afternoons before watching hockey training. We had a meeting today with two of my teachers. We discussed how I was doing and how I could learn more things in English during the lessons. Tomorrow, everybody leaves to Karlstad for another hockey tournament. It will be a little bit harder than the Elite Cup and we will get to miss school on Friday again. We play three games on Friday and two games on Saturday so far. Some of the teams are the same as the last tournament so we know where we are at a little bit. My dad will stay until Tuesday before leaving and will come back some time in November.



2010 0926 Elite Cup

Viking Logo

This weekend we had some more very tough days of hockey. On Thursday night we had our first game of the Djurgarden Elite Cup. We played the host team which was not the best team, but we knew that they would not be easy. After a terrible start we scored seven goals in a row to win 7-2. We got to miss school on Friday because of the tournament. We would play a team from Helsinki, Finland and another team from Sweden. The Helsinki team was small and short on players but they were still very good. After trading goals for most of the game, we ended up tying 5-5. We had to come up with a win to stay in the running for first place in the next game and did that. We scored four goals right away and eventually won 4-2. We then faced a team from Norway that was not very good and won 9-3. Going into our last game of the round robin, we were tied for first and were playing a different Helsinki team. They were a little better and despite outshooting them 40-15 we finished with a 1-1 tie. With some help, we finished in first place which meant we had to go right back onto the ice and play aginst yet another team from Helsinki. We were a little bit tired, but scored late in the game to win 2-1. This put us in the semifinals going into Sunday making us play a fourth team from Helsinki, Finland. When our team got to the rink, we found out that half of the other team had ate bad food and were sick. Our coach had the choice of making them forfeit and going to the finals which did not look as fun as playing the game with the team from Helsinki adding some of the players from the other Helsinki team. He chose to play the game which looked like the right decision when we got out to a great start with a 2-0 lead at halftime. However, in the second half the referees called 53 penalty minutes on us, most of which we did not deserve. The first five minutes of the second half took over thirty minutes to play. Because of that, we completely lost our momentum and a lot of our players to the penaty box. Helsinki went on to score powerplay goals and win 3-2. This was extremely frustrating because the referees took the game out of our hands. We never had a chance to really come back. Our assistant coach was ejected from the game because our coaches asked for an explanation for the penalties and they would not give them one. This put us in the consolation game which was televised. We played the other #1 seed that was also upset. This team is from Stockholm too, and is very talented. We traded goals throughout the game, but still found ourselves down by a goal late in the third period. We scored two goals, but they were both called off! This was very frustrating after what happened this morning. We went on to lose and finish in fourth place out of twelve teams. The talent was very high in this tournament and will be even higher next weekend when we have a tournament in western Sweden. After the semifinal I wish we would have made the decision to play straight to the finals, but in the long run, it was better that we played. Today, I learned that the referees are not always good and somehow we have to find a way to win.



2010 0921 Another Victory

Taby Logo

This weekend was another tournament at Farsta with many short games. We went 3-0 in the first round robin with two shutouts to move on to the winner's bracket. Here we had a great start in the first game, but faltered late in the game to tie 3-3. This put us in a tough situation. We had to win by two goals and score three in the process to become champions because of the weird format where there is no championship game. We played very well and came up with the 4-2 victory that made us champions two weeks in a row. There are so many tournaments in September and October because the regular season goes from November to January. During this time, there are many games and the training gets easier and lighter. Coming up from Thursday to Sunday is a small tournament in Stockholm with some of the best teams from Scandinavia and many more practices. We have a game Thursday night and will get to miss school on Friday because of the tournament.

2010 0917 A Full Month



Some More Off Ice Training

It has been a month exactly that I have been here in Sweden. The time has gone by very fast as it only feels like two weeks. I have been doing so many things that I have not had time to think about everybody in the United States. This last week we have had more grueling training. One day was tougher than the others though. On Monday, we had to climb up this hill/mountain many times. It was especially hard because it had rained for two days steadily before thirty of us ran up and down it several times. As you can see it got vey muddy around the bottom. However, after we played a little bit of soccer which was pretty fun to warm down. I am still learning Swedish pretty fast due to all of my classes and everybody around me speaking the language. In the school that I am going to there is very little homework and no grades. There are also only four or five subjects per day with about twenty minutes in between each. It suprised me that there is not that much schoolwork in Sweden. Coming up the next two days is a tournament. If we win, it will be the third week in a row that Taby has won at Farsta. We have three games tomorrow and two on Sunday.



2010 0912 Another Week and a Tournament

Off Ice Training

The last week has been more busy than ever and that is why I have not been able to post anything. Last Sunday, we played a game. After a really bad start, we played better, but still went on to lose 4-3 to another team from Stockholm. Because it was only exibition, some of our best players did not come to the game to give the other players more time to play. After that, we drove straight back to our home rink in Taby to practice with the '96 team since they were short on players. Then we had the '97 practice right after. Both practices and the game amounted to over four hours on the ice. We had practices for at least two hours through the week every day except Friday after a tiring day of school. However, the busiest part of the week was the last two days. There were two '96 tournaments this weekend. The top fifteen players that were one year older than us played in the better tournament. Freddy coached this team who eventually went 3-6. They had a very rough schedule and played eight games the last two days. That only left eight '96's left to play in the lower tournament. Because of that, Taby picked Erik, some other '97's, and I to play up one year to the '96's for the lower tournament. Rafael, the assistant coach went to our games. We played three games the first day and won 2-1, 6-5, and 2-1. In two of the games, we scored in the last minute to break the tie. That gave us a head start in the winner's bracket which has four teams. The tournament format is very strange and is really hard to describe. There is no championship, but a second round robin. We won the first game today 2-1 with another late goal by Erik. That put us one point ahead of SDE who is from Stockholm. Our '97 team beat the same team 8-2 last weekend. I was surprised to see them do well in this tournament with older teams in the competition. We played pretty well and got the 1-1 tie which was all we needed to win the tournament. In the end of the game they missed a penalty shot and some other chances to be champions. Part of the reason that most of the games were so low scoring was because there were only thirty minutes to play. Coming up next week is more school and practices and maybe a tournament on the weekend.

2010 0904 Hockey Weekend

Warming up for the Game

I have been very busy the last few days as usual and have not gotten to the blog. Wednesday-Friday featured normal days at school with practices during the night. I am learning Swedish nicely and hopefully I can have an idea of what people are saying in two months. Last night I saw a new rink as we practiced in another Stockholm rink. In Sweden, there is just one rink in every arena where in the United States there are two to four. Of course in Sweden there is an arena every 5 square miles, and only one arena every 50 square miles in the United States. I am beginning to get more used to the number of practices for hockey and my settings around me. Because of this, I can look forward to enjoying practice more without worrying about other things. Today we played our first game in almost two weeks against a much disliked team by Taby. We started out alright, and then scored two goals in ten seconds to take a 3-1 lead early in the second half. We kept scoring and actually scored six goals in seven minutes and eventually won 8-2. This was a surprise to everybody because the same team beat Taby 8-0 earlier in the season. I played very well on defense and picked up two assists. Up tomorrow is a game on the other side of Stockholm and a practice back in Taby so it will be a tiring day.