2010 1005 Karlstad

Karlstad Arena

This last week on Thursday after school, the Svensson's family, a teammate, my dad, and I drove from Taby to Karlstad for our biggest hockey tournament yet. The drive took four hours which is not that hard for me because in the United States we drive four hours to get to half of the teams in our league. However, in Sweden they are not used to driving more than one hour to go to hockey since mostly all the teams are in or around Stockholm. There were twelve of the best teams from Sweden in this tournament. We would play three games on Friday instead of going to school. We played very well and won 6-1, 4-3, and 10-0 against three decent teams. On Saturday, we would follow that up with 4-0 and 2-1 wins. The last game of the day I played very well and actually won player of the game. This gave us the #1 seed and a great chance to win the Oktobercupen. Since our games were over early on Saturday, some of us went out to lunch/dinner before going to the professional hockey game in Karlstad. You can see the arena in the picture above. There were two rinks that the organizers used for the tournament. One was small, but the other one was the same rink that the professional team uses. This was where we played most of our games. About eight thousand people could fit in it during the professional team plays. The team was called Farjestad and were playing a team from Modo, Sweeden. The teams were not nearly as good as teams in the National Hockey League but the game was still fun to see because everything was so different. Farjestad ended up winning 2-0 on two weak goals. We then came back to the hotel and went to sleep so we were prepared for the semifinal match the next day. We played pretty good and won 3-2. However, we took eight penalties and were a little tired for the championship game against the host team, Farjestad. This team was not so talented, but they played very well defensively as a team and scratched out a 1-0 game to win the championship. They made our team get very frustrated and take more penalties. The game was very devensive as the shots were only 14-8 in favor of them. Farjestad also won the Elite Cup and will be the favorite to win more tournaments in the future. However, they can  be defeated by us in the next tournament in January. We wanted to win gold but will take silver because we had a great tournament up to the last game. It was fun to play in the big arena with all the advertisements on the ice and the boards. I also enjoyed my dad visiting me the last week and watching the games as he left this morning. He will be back in late November to visit again. This week we have more practices, but will not have a tournament on the weekend for the first time in over a month.