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Inside story: William Salming's journey to a member of Quebec City Citadelles
#1
(This post was last modified: 07-28-2020, 09:39 AM by Salming.)

(First article bonus 2X)

William Salming, a skillful winger from Finland, was without a club still a week ago. However, yesterday he made a franchise history by being a first Quebec City player to be named one of the three stars of the regular season game. Salming scored one goal and assisted another against Carolina Kraken and was named the second star of the game. Salming was part of Quebec's 4th line which makes that accomplishment even more incredible. But how was it possible? To understand that, we need to travel a little bit back in time.

Salming comes from a normal family. He has a younger sister but no other siblings. His parents idol was a famous Swedish hockey player Börje Salming who is also very far relative to William's family. That's why Salming's first name is William because his parents wanted to give him a Swedish first name even though whole family has always lived in Finland.

In his youth, Salming played football and floorball alongside ice-hockey. He also spent all his spare time with the kids of neighbourhood by playing all kind of sports (floorball, football, hockey, tennis, badminton, beach volleyball, Finnish baseball, back yard olympics etc.). Because Salming had five or six boys living near to him in neighbourhood, they were able to improve their stickhandling, passing and shooting skills everyday by playing outside and that's why Salming is nowadays so good with the puck and has always been (according to analytics his shooting accuracy is 13, puckhandling 13 and passing 12). William always played with a floorball stick manufactured by Salming.

On the other hand, William is not the most powerful person or fastest skater and you could say he is also still a little bit shy when it comes to puck battles but with his excellent vision, positioning, understanding of the game (offensive read 12 and defensive read 10) and puck skills he can still dominate on the ice. He has also enough of agility to protect the puck in the corners and find passing and shooting lines from tight spaces.

One of the most important aspects of Salming's game is that he never gives up because every time he is on the ice he just wants to score points and help his team that way because when Salming is on the scoreboard, his team has better chance to win the game. However, when Salming was younger, he thought too much his individual stats but luckily nowadays he has developed his mindset and is pretty happy if his team wins even though he might haven't scored. Of course, if you are a offensive minded forward, you can never be 100% happy with 0+0 stat line even though your team wins but I have heard that Salming can be now 80% happy which is a big improvement when comparing the situation to what it was a couple of years ago. His determination and professionalism (15/20) have always been on good level but now his team player attributes are also even at the same level which was hard to believe two years ago.

Maybe it was Salming's lack of physicality or his knee problems as younger but he was not selected in the recent SMJHL draft. We also have an inside information that Salming forgot to confim his attending to the draft so that might be another reason. However, on July 22nd, a couple of days after the SMJHL draft, Salming got three emails from his agent. On that time, Salming was a free agent because his contract with his hometown team had ended. In his last year as an amateur player Salming scored 24 goals and 10 assists in 34 games when playing at the same club with his childhood friends. The level of play was not so high because teams in the league where all within 30 kilometres each other. You could say that boys played hockey as a hobby without ambitions to be professionals. However, inside his own mind Salming has always known that he has enough skill to be a professional player. The problem is that his lack of physicality has prevented him to really pursue a professional career so Salming was pretty surprised that three teams still were interested about him. He thought that maybe they had heard about him during a national skill competition which is organised every year. Salming was the most accurate shooter on that competition last year by scoring four of his five shots against wooden goalkeeper with the holes in corners.

The first offer came from Evok, GM of a Quebec City  Citadelles . As a fan of Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL, Salming was already pretty sure that he also wants to be a part of an expansion team because that is something unique that every person is not able to experience. On the other hand, Salming also loves winning and that's why he also listened offers from last year's junior finalist Anaheim  Outlaws and St. Louis  Scarecrows but pretty quickly he decided to at least not join to Anaheim because it plays in the same division than Golden Knights and felt impossible to imagine himself in Anaheim's jersey. Salming is also a little bit weird with the stats and numbers sometimes. For example, if a team has won gold last year, Salming thinks it is against odds to win again. He uses a lot term called "statistical loss". That's why he declined the offer from St. Louis who won the Stanley Cup last year. Salming is also a person who don't want to jump to a table which is already full of everything. He prefers to grinding and climbing from bottom towards the top. He really felt that in Quebec he has a chance to become a historic player in a new franchise and also got bigger minutes than in other organisations.

According to our sources, Salming's plan is to spend at least four years in the juniors or maybe even maximum five to set as many franchise records as possible before moving on in his career because he just loves too much that kind of statistical stuff. That was also one of the reasons why GM Evok was ready to offer immediately "2M+2M bonus" contract to a player who shows a long-term commitment. Salming also knows his weaknesses and that he needs at least three seasons before he might be ready to play in SHL which is tough men's tough league. He really wants to be ready as an similar all-around player and two-way forward than Golden Knights' Reilly Smith before leaving SMJHL. William admires also NHL organisations which likes to cook and marinade their prospects instead of hurrying them to a lineup. That might of course lower Salming's chances to be picked in the first rounds of the upcoming SHL draft but at least he is an honest person and will probably tell also all SHL teams during draft interviews that he is not going to leave from SMJHL anytime soon because he wants to win the junior cup with the Quebec City first.

After Salming had accepted the contract offer from GM Evok, he quickly packed his bags, said goodbye to friends and flew to Quebec. He watched first preseason games from the stands but in the final two preseason games Salming made his way to a 4th line. In his preseason debut William's linemates were Zach Dolphin and Jst Maro. British kid Dolphin also prefers to play on the right so Salming was moved to left wing. Center Maro comes from Slovenia so it was all European rookie line which helped Salming to adapt faster because he was not the only one who needed to adjust smaller ice size.

Kelowna beat Quebec 4-1 in Salming's preseason debut. William's TOI was 08:07 and he played nine shifts. Adjustment took time and that's why Salming's stats line was full of zeros when it came to shots on goal, hits, points, plus/minus rating or anything. Well, he had one giveaway and one faceoff loss against Rocco Berni in the second period but that's it. Game rating was only 44 according to analytics (OGR 46 and DGR 42) but it is worth a mention that at the time 04:02 in the first period Salming got to a shooting position but Viesturs Grabeklis blocked amazingly the shot between the dots so that was a little positive sign in William's first game.

In the second game on the same day Quebec faced Vancouver and lost 3-0. Salming got a little bit more ice time, 08:37. He had three missed shots during eight shifts which was again a positive signal. There is no need to worry if you at least get scoring chances. Goals will come when they come and sometimes just needs to be patient. On the other hand, Quebec's 4th line was on ice when Vancouver scored its second goal right after the first one in the first period.

July 27th was the day when regular season was supposed to begin. Salming was still unsure his role in a new club because preseason games went how they went. It was a nice surprise when William saw his name in the lineup after arriving to a morning skate. He continued in the same line with Maro and Dolphin. The first game of the regular season was against St. Louis. Quebec lost its first ever regular season match 5-1 but Salming got again a little bit more ice time than in previous matches. He played 10:36 and managed to record his first shot on goal as well as two hits in the first period. The historic first shot on goal came at time 13:36 but goalkeeper Nicolae Antonescu saved easily the shot from the far left wing. A couple of minutes later Kriss Darzins was hitted by Salming in the corner but the referee did not blow to his whistle. In the beginning of the third period Quebec's 4th line was on ice when St. Louis scored its last goal so William's plus-minus rating was -1 in the first official game.

The second match of the season was against Carolina Kraken. At that time Salming, Maro and Dolphin had played together three games and finally their chemistry began to show also on the scoresheet. Against St. Louis they already had a couple of longer shifts in the offensive zone but now they also managed to capitalize their chances. Quebec led 1-0 after first period thanks to a goal by Teylora Petrov. Salming and Maro were on the ice when Petrov scored so they had +1 rating after the first 20 minutes. Carolina tied the game early in the 2nd but after that Quebec City's fourth line stepped up. There was played six minutes and 35 seconds when Salming won his first career faceoff against Bobby Bergen. That lead to a short shift in Carolina's defensive zone but Dolphin was not able to score. However, there was under two minutes left in the period when Maro won the draw in the offensive zone. Salming was right behind him and shot quickly from high slot. Dolphin was in front of the goalie but tipped the puck to the pads. Salming got the rebound and at the same time Dolphin moved open to the right corner of the goal. Salming was able to pass the puck to him and Dolphin had an easy job to put the puck in the net. First ever point in the SMJHL was a real thing for Salming and also Dolphin. Defenceman Julian Cunningham got the other assist after touching the puck also after Maro's faceoff won.

There were six minutes played in the third period when Yuuto Kira Cloudera Jr. dumped the puck to Carolina's territory. Salming managed to beat Ambacas Cuddles and won the puck to Quebec behind the goal line. After that Salming passed the puck back Cloudera to the blue line. Cloudera found Maro from the high slot and reliable center shot the puck towards the goal past the opponent's players. Goalkeeper and word monster Ragnar-Alexandre Ragnarsson-Tremblay saved the shot but rebound bounced straight to Salming who also was moved to high slot and put the rebound past the Ragnarsson-Tremblay with an accurate shot to score his first ever SMJHL goal. William had practised many years his shooting technique and proved that his wins in national skill competitions weren't luck.

It was a pity that Quebec couldn't hold its lead in the end and Carolina forced the game to the overtime with two goals in the last six minutes. Carolina was better team in the shootouts and won the game 4-3 but at least Citadelles got its first ever regular season point and showed that it can challenge all teams in this league if goalkeepers are hot. Carolina won shots on goal 42-18 so it was an excellent performance from David Danielson in Quebec City's net.

So, even though Quebec City lost, Salming was named the second star of the game with his 1+1. He played record minutes 12:53 during 14 shifts. Offensive game rating was impressive 70 and game rating 61. Plus-minus was +2 and Salming also blocked one shot. He also won two faceoffs and lost only one. In the first game against Scarecrows all three stars of the game came from St. Louis' team but against Carolina Kraken Salming was able to make franchise history like we mentioned in the beginning of this article. That was first of the hopefully many franchise records that Salming hopes to achieve during his time in a beautiful Quebec City in the next years. He has improved steadily his performances on ice in every game so far and it will be very interesting to see how this Finnish winger with a lots of skill will continue his rookie season with Citadelles. The team will also be stronger every week when rookies get more experience so Quebec City is definitely a team to watch when the season goes on.

Word count: 2407 words

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#2

Citadelles Glad to have you along for the ride!

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#3
(This post was last modified: 07-28-2020, 10:28 AM by RomanesEuntDomus.)

07-28-2020, 09:02 AMSalming Wrote: In his youth, Salming played football and floorball alongside ice-hockey. He also spent all his spare time with the kids of neighbourhood by playing all kind of sports (floorball, football, hockey, tennis, badminton, beach volleyball, Finnish baseball, back yard olympics etc.). Because Salming had five or six boys living near to him in neighbourhood, they were able to improve their stickhandling, passing and shooting skills everyday by playing outside and that's why Salming is nowadays so good with the puck and has always been (according to analytics his shooting accuracy is 13, puckhandling 13 and passing 12). William always played with a floorball stick manufactured by Salming.

Dude you should switch to Zone, so much better than Salming Tongue

Nice read!
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#4

I love all the detail you put into describing your backstory and the specific plays of each game - fantastic article!  Citadelles

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#5

Great stuff! Smile

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After 69 shots on net with still no SHL goals to show for it, even the opposition started to feel so sorry for Lemo, that they decided to help him out :D
- Bad pass by Jack Klompus, he gave it right to Lemo Pihl.
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