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***sköldpaddor*** · 03-11-2019, 03:25 PM

Blog Post 4: March 11

SOMEWHERE ABOVE CANADA (ONCE MORE) --- Hej again everybody! I’m on my way to Halifax again while I’m writing this, although some of the stuff I have to talk about is definitely stuff that happened back in Kelowna and other places on the road. Maybe I should change my blog subtitle to “Gunnar Söderberg rambles about his life from anywhere he feels like it” but whatever. I’m not sure there’s a huge audience ready to break down my door about the details anyway. It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything on here, and things have been pretty busy! A lot has happened since last time, so I will try to recap.

We’ve played twenty-six games now, so we’re almost exactly halfway through the season. That’s so wild to think about because it feels like just yesterday I was holding my breath trying to figure out where I would be drafted. And now I’m here, halfway through my first season, and in a lot of ways I feel like I’m only just starting to figure out all the stuff I still have to learn. I’ve struggled with a lot of things so far - keeping up with the pace of the game we play here, making the most of my minutes, not letting myself get frustrated into taking stupid penalties.

But a lot of things are starting to feel like they’re coming together, too. We’ve won three out of our last four games (and the game we lost, I thought we played really well, we just let in a goal in the last couple minutes and it was a shame the score didn’t really reflect the game we played. We always seem to struggle against St. Louis, but I guess that makes sense with them being the reigning champs and all. I don’t think we play them again the rest of the season, though, so we’ll have to just take that time to get better and surprise them the next time we see them.

Anyway, I mention the last few games because I’ve felt like my own game is starting to finally come together. We shut out Colorado on the road, and I got my first goal! I have the puck sitting on my desk at home, but I think I’m going to mail it to my mom when we get back from this road trip. Then we went to Anchorage and beat them 7-5 and that was just a really cool game overall. About a minute into the game, we put together the sweetest passing play, just bang bang bang, PLD to Sami to Fudge, and then Fudge kinda fought with a guy over it for a minute before he got it to me and it was just perfect, all I had to do was put it away. There was a whole lot of scoring that whole game, but then in the third period, I set Sami up for his first goal of the season and I think I was more excited about that than I was about my own goal. His ended up being the game-winner, and we got first and second star and it was just really cool. Our line has been working so hard and it’s just that much more rewarding to see things start to reflect on the score sheet. Hopefully we can keep it up as we head into the second half of the season.

Things have been going pretty great for me personally too - off the ice, I mean. I don’t think I realized how much I was worried about not fitting in over here until I started feeling like I do fit in and it was a massive relief. When I first moved in with the two guys I live with, I sort of felt a little awkward. They were already friends, and the only people I knew even a little bit on the whole continent were playing on other teams, so I felt a little lonely at first. It’s different now, though, it’s better. We all hang out and play video games together, and they’re basically my best friends now so I think I can safely say I’ve gotten past the awkwardness.

I also think maybe that’s part of why better things are happening on the ice. Sasha isn’t on the same line as me and Vadim, but I really do think just general locker room presence is one of those intangibles that people either swear by or kind of scoff at. Having him around makes both of us want to be better, I think, even if we’re not on the ice at the same time. I know this is a sport where toughness is kind of everything - you have to be able to go out there and take hits and push guys off the puck and stick with it even when your lungs are burning and your legs feel like they can’t possibly move anymore.

But I think that having good people around you makes you tougher. You’re on a team with all these other players and when you know they have your back, and you know they’re good guys and they’re rooting for you to succeed, it seems to make everything else come a little easier. It makes it easier to play harder, makes it easier to think about setting other people up, to know where your guys are. And practice is the backbone of it all, of course, because with enough practice you learn how to communicate with guys who may not even speak the same language you do, you learn how to put plays together with them and how to adjust on the fly when you don’t have time to stop and explain things to each other. But having that basic connection just gives you a leg up on everything else, and I think that’s one of the big reasons we’ve been playing so well as a team lately.

I’m glad I get to play with the guys I do, and I think it’s obvious most of the time that I couldn’t be happier to be doing what I’m doing. I was talking to my mom on the phone this past week (it was her birthday, so I called and talked to her for a long time when we had an off day) and she said I sounded happier - not that I sounded unhappy before, but like I just had more things to be happy about. And I think she’s right. I think I do have a lot to be happy about right now. I still miss home, of course. I guess that's not going away any time soon. Missing my mom's birthday for the first time ever reminded me of that. When I'm at home, I bake her a cake (it has never turned out well, not even once. I'm not a bad cook but I can't bake to save my life, I always manage to even ruin a box mix somehow), and my sisters all come over with all their kids and we all have a huge party. We don't really do this for anybody else's birthday, just my mom's, and she always says she doesn't need a party but at this point it's just a tradition and we can't stop! This year my dad video called me while everybody was at the house and I still got to sing with them and everything, but it was weird not being there. I'll have to make her a cake when I go home this summer to make up for it.

But she's happy for me. She knows I'm over here doing what I've worked to be able to do, and she's glad that I'm fitting in and getting better at hockey. And when stuff gets really difficult, I tell myself that I'm doing it for her. Because it wasn't just me working to get here, she was working to give me the chances that I've had that led me here, too. She's always been my biggest fan, driving me hours at a time to get me to games in other cities. My dad (my biological dad, who I don't really remember) died when I was two, and for about seven years there, my mom raised all seven of us on her own. Some of the time, she worked three jobs to make sure we had enough money to make everything happen (my sisters did too; they're all a lot older than me). Once she married Karl (he's technically my stepdad but he's the only father I ever remember having so I just think of him as my dad), things got a little easier because there were two of them to shuttle all of us kids around and to help keep us all fed and stuff, but for a long time, it was just her. She's kind of a superhero. And she worked so hard to make sure I had all the best stuff and the best opportunities, so I always want to go out there and make her so proud of me.

I have to go now - we're about to land and I have to shut down my laptop, but I just want to finish by saying that if you're lucky enough to have a mom who's done as much for you as mine has done for me, you should definitely go and tell her you love her! And you don't even have to tell her that I told you to do it.

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*Zoone16* · 03-11-2019, 11:26 PM

Love the format! It’s refreshing to see this style of article pop up more often. Knights

SecondSucks22 · 03-13-2019, 01:25 AM

Great blog! If you ever need baking advice I'm always a message away!

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