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Renomitsu · 03-21-2020, 09:14 PM

From Grace to the Grind - The Story of Emilia Bergman

Focus.

Emilia buckled briefly, gliding on just her left skate after landing a double axel. That would be a point deduction, one of the select handful on her many routines during the World Juniors in Bulgaria.

The rink almost seemed too short. She needed speed -- no, momentum -- for her second double axel, and there wasn't enough space. Lowering her right skate, she got low and fast, feeling the burn in her quads and lower back. There was little space for sophisticated grace here; she needed physics to work in her favor.

Focus.

It felt as though she was gliding down a runway, without resistance. With nary a moment to spare, she gathered all of her remaining strength in her leading skate and started a tight turn. She launched, bringing her arms in and swinging her free leg to gain momentum and --

No. It wasn't enough. She winced in pain, completed two full turns instead of two-and-a-half, and felt her legs give out as she barreled for the end boards, a victim of inertia and technical execution limited by her own useless body. As Emilia landed she had barely a meter before hitting the wall, which she braced weakly for with her arms. She collided with an unceremonious, anticlimactic bump, and the impact of the failed move was insult to injury.

Emilia Ilse Bergman was born in Jönköping, Sweden to Carina and Tomas Bergman, a retired figure skater turned human rights activist and commercial sales representative, respectively. As the third of three girls - the others her older sisters Astrid and Olivia - she grew up in a major urban center with an abundance of role models in her own family.

Olivia, the eldest of the sisters born five years prior to Emilia, was mature, sophisticated, and worldly. For most, she would be described as possessing a je n'ais sais quoi, some indescribable, compelling quality that drew others to follow her lead and envy her poise. Though a first child is inevitably an experimental period in parenting, Carina would grow to adore her and foster a growth mindset, handling setbacks and disappointment with a level head - at least superficially - and forge a path forward through bouts of uncertainty. From a young age, Olivia sought to pass on the knowledge learned as a result of her years of experience, though teaching is hardly a skill learned overnight.

Astrid burned as brightly as her name suggested, taking on her father's exuberant and gregarious personality and speaking in impassioned, animated bouts from the moment she learned to speak. She was demanding but convivial, high-maintenance but the highlight of any gathering she sought to attend. She was "min lilla stjärna," her father's little star, softened only by her delicate and deliberate older sister in moments of discomfort. Ambitious and quick-witted, Astrid was as likely to come up with a brilliant idea as she was to seek a way to make others' better, optimistic and motivated to make her community and inventions the best they could possibly be.

That left Emilia, she who constantly trailed Olivia's elegant coattails and could never get a word in edgewise with Astrid. While Olivia excelled in academics and Astrid in athletics and communications, Emilia could do little other than hide in their shadows, even from a young age. After seeing her sisters pass through primary school, Emilia's teachers expected her to take on the best qualities of both: to be unerringly cool under pressure, to effortlessly find solutions to problems. Her best moments were met with jarring comparisons to her sisters, even as early as six years of age, alternately tempering and tearing down her steely resolve as she was relegated to 'good, but not great.'

Perhaps an abundance of role models was not the appropriate phrase to use - instead, Emilia was ostensibly bereft of accomplishments and short of the lofty standards set by her sisters. Thankfully, as a child she was blissfully unaware of the game of 'compare and contrast' she was constantly subjected to by the adults in her life. Instead, she took typical childlike solace in building blocks and playing house with her friends Alice, Nora, and Sigrid. She learned her letters, numbers, and diacritics, and played games, particularly enjoying the flurry of colored ribbons involved in maypole. She imagined being a mighty warrior just as often as she acted the damsel in distress in games analogous to fairy tales, but found her carefree world interrupted by notions of human rights violations in faraway countries, or disruptions in her father's work making money a bit tight.

From a young age, what brought Emilia perhaps the most joy was watching old tapes of her mother figure skating at regional and national competitions as a teenager and young adult. She was enthralled by the careful, measured movements and seamless grace -- and its contrast with the fall-heavy practices while constantly pushing the limits she witnessed through grainy video (in reality it was probably the flowing, colorful dresses). Though not able to truly understand the forces at work, Emilia begged her mother for skates of her own - but she refused. It took nearly two years of persistent asking before her mother relented and gave Emilia her first pair of skates, but not before starting her on piano and vocal lessons in the interim: over time, it became increasingly clear that Carina had no interest in having her children follow her exact path to earning a living.

The first ice skating lessons were tame: Emilia wobbled like an infantile deer on the ice with her mother or older sister, now 12, there to steady her. While Olivia owned a pair of skates of her own, she had no illusions about embarking on the perilous path of figure skating, instead opting to casually and effortlessly glide across rinks when socially called for. At seven years old, Emilia picked up quickly on the basics - and after just a few frustrating hours could comfortably (slowly) accelerate and bring herself to a stop on the ice. The path was naturally complicated by her own ambition: she'd waited so long to perform Lutz and Axel jumps before she'd even really learned to move with her skates in contact with the rink below her. The diminutive skater tried her best to replicate the moves whenever she was away from close supervision making the lessons more physically painful than they really needed to be, but she persisted, holding on to this as the one thing she might ever have to herself.

Even after a few winters of careful practice, Emilia suffered from impostor syndrome, and the tacit comparison she received to her sisters in school wore on her psyche. She reached the age where it was typical to notice body language and suppressed reactions -- and every time she failed to handle a mishap with the same unflappability of her oldest sister or the unerring determination of Astrid, she saw a teacher with hands on their hips or a brief muffled look of disappointment, and every one would crush her. But who would she go to? Her teachers were all familiar with her sisters; certainly her sisters couldn't find out about her shortcomings; and her mother was already hesitant to start her on ice skating - she couldn't risk losing that, too.

Emilia trembled at rest, her mother and figure skating teacher looking onward. Gradually, she shook off her nerves, and let out a quick exhale; she skated forward slowly, feet shoulder-width apart, arms relaxed and ankles tightened as she accelerated. She pulled her arms ahead of her, swinging her right knee up and jumping while pulling her arms in and...

A full turn as she began to return to the ice, settling on a turn-and-a-half as she settled neatly, letting her momentum carry her non-landing leg outstretched behind her. She could hardly contain her excitement, taking quick, short strides that gradually lengthened towards the edge of the rink, skates gently clacking against the ice as she hopped up and down. It was her first smooth single Axel, a benchmark for figure skating progress that she knew to hold on to as long as she could. Emilia rubbed her knees, as the rink had not been kind to her after dozens of previous spins that were close but just short of where she needed to be.

Much like her father before her, Emilia towered over her peers as she hit her growth spurt. At 165cm in sixth grade, she had a reputation for being the 'tall girl' in years prior, with no apparent signs of slowing down; indeed, she was about the same height as her sisters three and five years older than she. Regardless, she had a slight frame - as most figure skaters do - and thriving at junior competitions, and used her success there as motivation for her schoolwork. As far as she was concerned, Emilia had no time for boys or gossip; a moment spent dallying was a moment her competition was practicing or resting. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she was regimented, exact, and likely seemed a little stuck-up as a result.

Time passed and she continued to grow, which presented its own problems for her years-long passion for figure skating. Unfortunately, there existed (and likely continues to exist) a strongly superficial component to the sport, one that doesn't suit itself to 165 cm women, and she found the advice of her overall more-petite mother and figure skating teachers to fall flat on her larger frame. Emilia alternately put on more muscle and slimmed her frame for competitions, and her progress began to plateau. She ascended as high as the World Juniors Figure Skating Championship in Sofia, Bulgaria some four years ago.

The Bulgarian competition was the height of Emilia's confidence; she was the second selection for Sweden, permitted only after her nation had placed quite well the previous year. She'd also competed in a flurry of competitions just months before the World Juniors, primarily earning her way up with a program filled with a series of primarily medium-difficulty maneuvers (perhaps to the behest of her national committee). Regardless, she performed well enough to qualify for the free skate - the final portion of the ladies' figure skating competition - fatigued from her recent barrage of national and international competitions.

When it came time for her to perform her free skate, she was visibly shaky, clearly spent, and unable to complete her routine. She fell unflatteringly, forcing her to halt her program two-thirds of the way through after a tricky, incomplete double Axel sent her to the boards adjoining the rink before completing an easier back third of her program. Emilia had earned a miserable score from the judges, pushing her out of medal contention much to the shame of her home country. She spent her time returning to Jönköping - back to the loving arms of her family for some consolation that could never truly erase the disappointment that pervaded her thoughts.

"Relax, it's not figure skating. We just thought it might be nice to get you out to the rink, you know?"

"I'm fine! Figure skating wasn't that big a deal anyways."

Sigrid rolled her eyes. "Emilia, you were at World Juniors five months ago and you've literally been a couch potato by comparison since. You're coming with us."

After World Juniors, Emilia saw a rapid decline in her commitment to figure skating. Try as she might, Lutzes and Axels were incredibly taxing even with limited reps, and her concentration constantly wavered. She'd slowed down her growth, approaching 175 cm, but gained weight in a way that was non-productive for her sport; try as she might, she hadn't been the ideal size for figure skating for a few years. Her subsequent competition results - failing to get to the free skate in most cases - dropped precipitously. The impostor syndrome that plagued her prior to figure skating returned to haunt her; in time, her grades declined and she slipped into a typical 'rebellious teen' phase all at once. She'd briefly stopped skating altogether - at least until her friends since primary school brought her out to the local rink (with some convincing).

Several kids from adjoining neighborhoods had gotten together and played a few friendly (?) games of hockey back and forth at the local rink after school. Most of the smaller players were flighty, creative, and scoring-oriented with a few grinders and goons mixed in, while the defensemen were (understandably) larger, but with a similar mix of skill and strength. Emilia was clearly preoccupied with apathy and low-key rebellion for a little while, until Sigrid and Nora prodded her into watching some of the older players. As current U15 girl's league players, they pointed out the importance of positioning, in particular a skilled stick-checking defenseman that operated on finesse rather than power.

"See? It's not all tackling like some of the boys lead you to believe," Sigrid remarked, "there are some delicacies to it, kind of like figure skating."

Emilia huffed, unfazed by the comparison - perhaps she'd developed some figure skating elitism in the process of training the last several years.

"I'm not into the whole hitting thing, really," Emilia replied, "but I could probably give these guys a lesson or two in skati--"

"Sounds like you have a project on your hands! I'll go grab some pads, a stick, some tape, a mouthguard and we can do it in an hour!"

"Wait!" she replied, though Nora was long gone by the time she responded.

To this day, Emilia has convinced herself it was their plan all along.

Their right winger had been giving her hell all game long. And here she was again, screaming down the ice at a feverish pace on Emilia's side, setting up for an easy one-timer from their center.

"Put her in the stands, Bergman!"

Emilia's coach, major leaguer Daniel Bischoff, was no stranger to meting out hard hits; she began skating backwards, cheating towards the side of the center to force them off towards her teammate. In her peripheral vision, she saw the second half of their defensive pair skating madly towards the puck and easily closing distance. After seeing the center pause for a split second to read her, Emilia glided backwards and broke off towards the flanking right wing. It was a tight window, but she bore down, gaining speed before lowering her shoulder, forcing the winger and all of her momentum straight into the boards. Off-balance and now without options, the opposing center made a reckless wrist shot that dinged off the left pipe. She quickly retrieved the puck, cleared it out to her center, and swapped off for the second pair.

The path to learning hockey was a slow, painful one for Emilia - not all that dissimilar to her first foray into figure skating. The pads were heavy - and though she was fit, Emilia was still relatively slight of build at nearly six feet tall. For her, skating was second-nature; agility on the ice, acceleration, and skating backwards were tasks she was comfortable with before ever donning pads. Adjusting her center of gravity and leveraging momentum were no more difficult. But all of the technical skills -- using the stick in any sense, puck control, passing, scoring -- and the mental skills like positioning and reading a defense were only mentioned in passing by Astrid when she was younger. Even with that advantage, she'd at best be a few years behind the younger players in her age bracket.

Now that she had friends - genuine friends, not work 'friends' you might expect from being in the figure skating business - invested in playing hockey with her, she set aside a bit of time each day to understanding the basics, and finding rink time with local kids and recreational leagues. Emilia found time to skate - thank goodness - in a capacity that didn't involve tight jumps and spins (usually, at any rate) while learning the strategy of it all from her friends and older sister. After some success in recreational hockey, she opted to join the Småland U15 division with HC Dalen, which understandably presented a much higher bar for competition than a rag-tag crew of neighborhood kids.

Qualifying for the U15 regional team was a difficult enough process; excelling was a far cry beyond that. Though Emilia's skating skills served her well, there was a clear difference in checking, hitting, and positioning with players who could make their way around the rink as well as she could - and even though she'd focused her fitness more on weights than previous, there was a clear difference in strength as well. Unfortunately, HC Dalen would perform relatively poorly that season but Emilia would be retained for the U16 team as what some might call a 'bubble' member. She was clearly not skilled enough to be part of a first defensive pair, but had developed into a reliable stay-at-home defenseman with in-progress positioning and difficulty reading opposing defenses while on the offensive.

Though the Sweden national team scouts had entirely passed up on Emilia, Småland was frequented by other western and northern European countries, if only for leisure travel to Stockholm and Gothenburg. As the year progressed, Emilia showed significant improvement in adjustment to the speed of division games, and became a tried-and-true traditional defenseman, even drawing interest from low-level high-volume scouts. And in time, as luck may have it, new Edmonton Blizzard pro Daniel Bischoff made a few appearances to youth hockey games during international showcase games, expressing an interest in a master class-style series of coaching sessions while the SMJHL and SHL seasons were out of session. Though not a star as of yet, Bischoff made a tangible impression on the team, who rallied around the opportunity - indeed, this was how Emilia developed her higher-division ready poke and body checking, as well as finally making progress (read: not being a complete liability) on the offensive side of the ice.

That season, though Bischoff only guest-coached for perhaps a week before needing to depart, HV71 Jönköping saw a surge in their play, finishing second in their division while qualifying for the U16 SM. They pushed their way through the regional games, group round, and quarter final before having their hopes dashed by the North region's first seed in the semi finals.

The following year - her first and only with the U18 division - did not have the same inspired play across the team, especially with most of its top players moving off to the U20/21 division. But after another season in organized hockey, Emilia noticed an uptick in the number of crowd members with clipboards and a discerning eye, one of which is included below.

Scouting Report - Emilia Bergman, LD, Sweden U18

Checklist Rating Scale
Top-Class (9-10) - Excels in this specific area and related areas, making them one of the best prospects in this attribute.
Very Good (7-8) - A clear and obvious strength, roughly top 30% for their cohort
Good (5-6) - Performs well, but not distinctive enough to be an area of specific strength, i.e. slightly above average
Average (3-4) - Needs work, roughly average ability compared to others with times above and below average
Poor (1-2) - Needs improvement, below average; not worth scouting this player for this attribute in a positive sense.

Category 1: Skating
Clearly an area of strength for Emilia. Has overall bursty speed with the ability to pull away from players, though not assessed frequently on the offensive end. Maneuvers flawlessly and even gracefully at times across the ice, with noted history in figure skating including a trip to the World Juniors in Sofia three years ago. High-quality balance, very difficult to hit off of her skates, and mobility to match. Good backward skating ability, though needs to be more clearly intentional when off the puck. Still feels as though she is adjusting to wearing pads while skating but clearly has a rock-solid foundation.

Acceleration - Good (6/10)
Speed - Good (5/10)
Balance - Excellent (9/10)
Mobility & Backward Skating - Very Good (7/10)

Category 2: Puck Skills/Offense
In contrast to skating, clearly among Emilia's worst trait sets. Shots often sail very wide of goal and are very rare, without power necessary to get by even average goalies. Has overall low-quality snap, backhand, and wrist shots and requires time to set up before letting loose; absent one-timing ability. Redeeming qualities in this respect are Emilia's ability to maintain and transfer possession. Protects the puck very well when in possession, and passing (receiving and giving) are rudimentary but adequate. Even from a stay-at-home defenseman perspective, she will need significant improvement in this category to be considered appropriate for professional play.

Shot - Poor (2/10)
Puck Handling - Good (5/10)
Passing - Average (4/10)

Category 3: Intangibles and Hockey Sense
Provided recent transition into hockey (~3 yrs), current progress is indicative of remarkable work ethic and good attitude, growth mindset. Consistency will improve with experience, but at present may perform at an above-average level or very poorly in consecutive games. Clearly has the ability to hustle for loose pucks and has the skating ability to back it up. Occasionally shies away from battling for pucks in large jams, will need to work on bravery in high-risk plays. Excellent temperament, takes bad calls and penalties well.

Work Ethic - Very Good (8/10)
Consistency - Average (4/10)
Discipline - Very Good (8/10)
Hustle - Good (5/10)
Decision Making - Good (6/10)

Category 4: Defensive & Physical Play
Classical stay-at-home defenseman. Plays smartly around boards and corners, has size but limited strength. Good stamina, but needs to work on build (and durability as a result). Will play every game in a season. Overall has adjusted to hitting very well; capable of separating smaller, faster forwards from the puck with effectiveness but struggles with power forwards and grinders. Not willing to take a fight, nor is she capable at this time - has reportedly zero fights since statistics started being recorded for her in U15.
Defensively, reads the rink very well and controls gaps with degree of expertise. Positions extremely well and can bias faraway forwards with positional know-how. Cleans the crease with proficiency and can both body & poke check. Overall has relatively low experience with close end-of-game situations due to marginal scoring ability.

Board/Corner Play, Positioning - Very Good (7/10)
Physical Presence & Hitting - Good (6/10)
Conditioning - Very Good (7/10)
Defensive Awareness - Very Good (7/10)
Reliability Average (4/10)

Miscellaneous Notes
Has tremendous potential for growth provided recent entry into hockey and rapid improvement. In my two years of scouting this player I have seen remarkable improvement, but it will be difficult for her to realize her full potential as many players have difficulty grasping the intricacies of the game after just a few years. At best could develop into a fringe first pair defenseman in the SMJHL but will have difficulty cracking no. 5-6 on any professional team.
In my opinion, does not have star potential and cannot reach the heights of higher-rated prospects around the world, e.g. Mikkel Sondergard, Mathew Sawful. I would project Emilia Bergman into third or fourth round of Junior draft at absolute best, but would need extensive time to develop offensively before that. She is overall unlikely to see international play, though if she continues to develop at this rapid rate it is possible to see her slot in as a substitute for injury on the Swedish junior national team in her prime.
She would benefit greatly from mentorship by a current professional player; as suggested by her time coached under Edmonton Blizzard player Daniel Bischoff, experience is extremely important to Emilia's development and can theoretically elevate her above her peers, even if they are not a defenseman themselves. Though most prospects have a clearly defined skill set at this stage in their career, she is still impressionable.

Player Summary: Stay-At-Home Defenseman
Traditional Realistic Potential Rating: 7 (No. 3-4 Defenseman)
Realistic Probability Rating: C/D

[4,238 from integrated word counter. 4,043 in Microsoft Word. Using first article 2x bonus.]

*roastpuff* · 03-22-2020, 02:17 AM

Very nice article, and great scouting report! More defensepeople for Sweden is always a good thing!

***sve7en*** · 03-22-2020, 02:38 PM

Hey, finally got to reading this, I like a lot! It's going to be really good for setting up your journey! I'm excited to see how you'll describe your rookie season in the league. No real critique or extra advice here Smile