Sweden you are now the 16th country I have played in :) I guess it was Saturday night when Rainer got confirmation from one of his contacts here that we could play hockey here , not only that but we were also getting picked up to go play ...
The fellow that helped us out was Jonas Rudberg , He is a former professional hockey player that played in a few cities in Germany & Sweden . I know he had played for Ulm ( which is next city I will be playing in )Jonas had not played in the last 8 years and just recently began to play hockey this year , but he definitely still has his skills !
Jonas picked us up around 630 pm and immediately he began telling us how excited his friends were to have the both of us playing with them . The arena we went to play in was called the Torvalla Ishall which is not very far from the Globe Arena . When we arrived at the arena it felt as though I had celebrity status fielding questions from just about everyone in our dressing room . Mostly we spoke about travels and former Maple Leafs greats from Sweden like Borje Salming & Mats Sundin ... It was great sharing stories about our heroes :)
Just before we got onto the ice I found out there was 5 goalies there and 1 of them graciously sat , we were paired up and my goalie partner was a beginner that has just started playing recently so I took him aside and showed him a few things and we decided to switch every 15 minutes during the game .
It was a mixed group with some ex pros and some weaker skaters , there were 30 skaters there and no limit to how long we played . Most of the guys were involved in youth groups so they were quite popular with the arena staff , basically they were told to lock the arena when we decided to leave :) so we played for 2 hours which was just what the doctor ordered ;)
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