2011 0825 Karlstad

Championship Arena

This is the rink where the championship was played in the tournament last week. The tournament took place throught Central Sweden in six different places. This was a big preseason tournament with 36 teams including two from Taby. Along with Josh and Ture, I played on the second team. We were okay and competed in ten out of our eleven games. We played five games in the first round which took two days. Unfortunately, we ended up fifth out of six teams and went into the C-playoffs. In this round we stepped up our play to go 4-1. At the conclusion of the tournament we ended up .500. However, the other Taby team played very well, qualifying for the A-playoffs where they would stay undefeated to go to the championship. After a close game with Brynas in the big arena the game would go to overtime tied 1-1. On a Taby powerplay Gustav Skyttvall blasted a slapper past the goalie to give Taby the win in dramatic fashion! It was a fun tournament for us Americans and playing in Sweden is always special. It was great to see Taby win another event. The bus rides to and from Karlstad were a blast as well. The drive was about four hours plus the time that it took us to stop and eat. The vehicle was pretty packed with around forty people filling up the fifty seats or so. After another day in Stockholm we flew home on Tuesday morning. First though, I went to school for a quick hello and said good-bye to the Svensson's and my teammates. After a long day on Tuesday with a shocking earthquake in the Washington D.C. area we arrived home. While the earthquake did not cause any injuries or much damage, it was the biggest on the east coast for 70 years. In two days we will prepare for a pretty strong hurricane that is coming up the East Coast already. I will try to keep blogging about the school year here and anything more I hear from Sweden.