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WJCs and a Hockey Christmas Overseas by Bill Meltzer |
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Eklund is taking Christmas Day off to be with his family. Bill Meltzer, HockeyBuzz's Flyers and Stars blogger and Editorial Captain, is substituting today. Eklund's blog will resume tomorrow.
Christmas time always makes me think of the impending start of the annual World Junior Championships tournament. The WJC has grown over the years into one of the most highly anticipated events on the hockey calendar and a rite of passage for the world's top young players. It is always fun to look back at past tournaments to see which players went on to have standout professional careers.
This year, I reluctantly turned down an opportunity to cover the World Junior Championships in Malmö, Sweden. I have a nine-month-old daughter, Lily Claire Meltzer, and I wanted to spend the extra time with her this December rather than traveling abroad over the holidays. As it is, I will hardly get to see her apart from the Olympic break while I'm covering practices and games over the remainder of the 2013-14 season.
The way I see it: These are precious months of her life that I will never get back again but there will always be another hockey event to cover. Nevertheless, passing up the chance to cover the WJC and make a return visit to Sweden -- where I have not been since the 2006-07 WJC in Leksand and Mora -- was a tough decision.
The best Christmas I have ever had was spent in Sweden during the 2006-07 tournament. I was freelancing for NHL.com and Phil Coffey, who was the editorial director at the time, graciously set up an arrangement with me where I would produce a series of blogs and feature articles -- both about the tournament itself and hockey in Sweden in general -- in exchange for enough compensation to offset the cost of the rather expensive trip.
There were of late nights and long days spent meeting my writing obligations, but I loved every minute of it. I also got to travel to different places around Sweden during some non-critical days of the tournament before the medal round. Apart from the WJC tourney in the Dalarna district of central Sweden, I also spent time in Stockholm and the northeastern town of Örnsköldvik.
We arrived in Stockholm on Dec. 23. At the recommendation of a Swedish journalist friend of mine by the name of Konstanin Foussianis, I spent the day around Djurgården and went to the Christmas market (julmarknad) at the famous Gröna Lund amusement park.
Very early the next morning, I took a train to Leksand. I stayed at a bed-and-breakfast a few hundred yards from the hockey arena (then called Ejendals Arena, but now called Tegera Arena after a sponsorship name change). The bed-and-breakfast, called Furuhaga Gästhem, was operated by Rickard and Marie Reimer.
Rick, who played collegiate baseball in the U.S. and represented Sweden internationally in the sport, preferred talking about baseball to hockey with me but he was knowledgeable about both sports. He and his wife had family members visiting for Christmas, as well as other guests attending the World Junior Championships.
Before the sun set in the afternoon, I walked around the picturesque surroundings of Lake Siljan. we booked a horse-pulled sled ride through Leksand on December 24, operated by a local farm called Myrbacka Gård. Since there was no snow, the sled ride was cancelled.
Instead, we took a horse and wagon ride, joined by a Swedish family from the western part of the country, taking a three-generation family trip to enjoy the holidays in Dalarna while staying at the nearby Korstäppan hotel in Leksand (a country squire's estate converted into a hotel).
As the sun set, I realized I had made two big mistakes in planning my trip to Dalarna. First of all, I had forgotten that Swedes have their main Christmas celebration on the 24th rather than the 25th. Secondly, I should have rented a car rather than traveling back and forth from Leksand to Mora via public transit and taxi.
However, both blunders ultimately ended up working out to my benefit.
On Dec. 24, I should have eaten a big meal earlier in the day or at least bought some food to eat in my room at Furuhaga. I did neither. As a result, my entire food for the day was a sample-sized packet of dried apricots, a handful of pistachios and a bottle of julmust (a seasonal soft drink that is very popular in Sweden) that I'd bought in Stockholm the previous afternoon.
Earlier in the day, the innkeepers had told us that Hotell Dalecarlia in the nearby town of Tällberg offered a traditional Swedish Christmas dinner -- a julbord (Christmas table) -- during the holiday week. Unfortunately, we had no way to get there, since we hadn't rented a car. There was no public transit running by this point, and the local taxi company was closed as well.
In the meantime, My wife and I could smell the Reimer's Christmas dinner upstairs. It smelled wonderful. On the small off-chance there was any business open in Leksand, we walked into the town square in futile search of someplace to find something to eat.
There was not a soul to be seen as we walked around but it was very calm and beautiful. The charming small red houses with smoke coming from the chimneys looked like something out of a storybook. As the trip progressed, I really came to enjoy the town.
When we first arrived at Furuhaga, the innkeeper, Rickard, told us the best thing about Leksand was its simple pleasures. He had lived much of his life in Stockholm and the US. Living in and around sparsely populated Leksand, he said, there is no crime, hardly any pollution or litter, little noise and lots of natural beauty.
"Just breathe in the air," he said. "You breathe better here. There's no stress, no time clock. A lot of people here live longer than folks in the city."
The air was crisp and clean in and around Leksand and the surrounding towns. Especially if you're a visitor, the pace of life there lent itself to talking long walks in the forest and simply standing by beautiful, placid Lake Siljan, looking out from the valley (Dalarna means "the valleys") at the peaks and trees in the distance.
As captivating as the views were during the daylight hours, they were almost an otherworldly experience at sunrise and sunset. Just gorgeous.
Early on the morning of Christmas Day, we had breakfast at Furuhaga, which was delicious. When I told the Reimers about my "Christmas dinner" of the previous day, they were sympathetic. Rick told me he could arrange for us to get a ride to Tällberg for the Dalecarlia julbord that night.
After breakfast, I walked to the hockey arena to get my tournament credentials and talk to some of the WJC organizers and team officials. I did some writing for NHL.com and then had the rest of Christmas Day to explore around Leksand. Meeting up with my wife, we took the scenic route to see Mission Kyrka in Leksand, stopping in to light a candle. Although I am Jewish, I could fully appreciate the beautiful architecture and welcoming interior of the church.
That night, we took in the julbord at Dalecarlia, which was very enjoyable. On Boxing Day, the tournament started. I covered Germany upset win over Team USA in a nearly empty arena, and I interviewed then-Buffalo Sabres prospect Philip Gogulla in the mix zone after the game. That night, I covered the Sweden-Canada game in a packed house.
By the time I got done from a long day at the arena in Leksand, it was almost 11 p.m. and once again nothing was open in town. Fortunately, we were invited to join a private party being held at a local restaurant called Bygatan 16 (the name is also the address), owned by a German man named Helmut Schwabe and his Swedish wife.
The party was a great time, and the Swedes I met -- who usually switch instinctively to speaking English in mixed company -- took amusement in hearing me try to speak halting Swedish to them. I remember that we met one local whose said his dream was to someday come to the USA and ride his snowmobile in Colorado.
The next day, I traveled by bus and car to Mora to cover the Canada-USA game (a 6-3 win for the Canadians). On the way, I stopped in the village of Nusnäs, which is the home of two stores that manufactured those omnipresent hand-painted wooden Dala Horses that have become one of the national symbols of Sweden.
On Dec. 28, I took a special detour back to Stockholm. That night, I met with my Pelle Lindbergh biography co-authour, Thomas Tynander, and Rolf Alex (a musician who had been longtime friends with Pelle and his family). We went to the cemetery where Lindbergh is buried, to the church where he was baptized and eulogized and then to his childhood home.
There, we spent an hour-plus Pelle's mother, Anna-Lisa (now deceased), his sister Ann-Louise and her husband Göran. Anna-Lisa and Ann-Louise showed me Pelle's old bedroom, which had been left untouched over the years and was filled with his hockey momentos and collections. I will not retell the entire story here, which is described in detail in Chapter 29 of the Behind the White Mask book.
Suffice it to say, it was a special evening that I will never forget. The Lindberghs, who had been out of town for Christmas but had come back to Stockholm just to meet with Thomas and me, were wonderful people.
Before the WJC medal round began back in Dalarna, I also took a side-trip to Örnsköldvik to visit with a longtime friend of mine named Martin Sedin. Martin, who is not related to the Sedin twins, was doing some play-by-play webradio broadcasting work for Modo at the time (today, he hosts the Modo TV web show on the team's official site). He arranged with the team for me to get a tour of the then brand-new arena, meet with club officials and then cover a Modo-Färjestad game. I used the gathered materials for an Across the Pond feature at NHL.com.
Ultimately, Canada went on the win the gold medal at the WJC. Team Canada took the gold medal game with Russia by a 4-2 score. What I remember the most from covering the tourney, however, is not the particulars of most of the games.
Instead, what I brought back with me were the memories of the places I visited and the people I met. Years later, the game scores and details are basically footnotes to me, although I'd spent so many hours before and during the tournament getting to know more about each of the teams and writing articles about the games and players.
Seven years later, I am glad to wake up in my own bed and spend a low-key Christmas day with my baby daughter. Even so, there is still a part of me that wishes I was in Malmö getting ready to cover the latest installment of the WJC.
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