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***sköldpaddor*** · 11-16-2021, 06:37 PM

What the hell is up, hockey world? I am here in Las Vegas (well, not at this moment, but like, usually), working my way through my first season in the SMJHL. Everything feels like it’s happening extremely fast, which is kind of crazy since it felt like the lead up to the draft took forever.

Anyway, since I’ve been here for a few weeks now and I think I’m starting to fit in, let me introduce myself. I’m Lias, I’m seventeen, and I’ve wanted to play professional hockey since I was seven years old. I grew up in Visby, Sweden, but before that I was born in the back seat of my parents’ car in a parking lot in Nynäshamn, because my moms were visiting family on the mainland and apparently I decided to show up a few weeks earlier than I was supposed to. So, my life got off to a kind of unusual start right from day one. With that kind of introduction to the world, you might think it’s been all non-stop excitement ever since, but I think everything in my childhood was pretty normal (other than the part where I have two moms, but that’s normal to me because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known).

Visby itself is pretty chill for a lot of the year. My parents own a little sandwich shop and things get really busy in the summer there because people come there for vacation, but the rest of the year it’s usually quieter than that. I’ve been playing hockey on the mainland for a lot of the time for a few years now, and I come home and help out at the restaurant in the summers. I actually really like Visby but you probably don’t need to hear me talk about all the cool stuff there if you aren’t planning to visit, so anyway, that’s the basics.

It’s weird that I spent pretty much my entire life in two places, and now here I am in a completely new one for the next few years. Las Vegas is not like any other place I have ever been. I mean, I’ve traveled to play hockey - I played in Örnsköldsvik before I got drafted by Nevada, and we had road games to other places in Sweden obviously, but nowhere like Las Vegas. There are just so many people, and everything is so bright all the time, and the game atmosphere is kind of just absolutely insane. I think maybe that’s because there is so much tourism here; in other cities you are going to have all of your local fans who get excited about the team, but they might not be there every single night or be as excited about every single home game. Here, it feels like there are just a huge number of people there every night who are just out of their seats excited to be seeing a hockey game, like it’s the first or only one they’ve ever gotten to see and they are just living for it. Everything is very loud, and it’s just pretty electric.

I’m settling in here alright as far as my game goes. The coaches here are giving me some really good direction on what to work on, which I don’t mind. I knew there was going to be a learning curve because I was coming to a whole new country to play in a whole new league with a bunch of people who are already really experienced and established in the league, and that has definitely been the case. I only have eight points this season so far and my defense is not where it needs to be, but I’m working really hard on that so it’s only a matter of time.

I am really enjoying my teammates, too. Right now I’m on a line with Wing Wang and Dave Heinrich. Dave is a guy who was signed by the team really soon after the draft, so he and I are the same draft class and I’m looking forward to finding out where we both end up in the SHL draft eventually. I’m trying not to focus too much on that right now though. We are only 22 games into the season right now and I am really enjoying what we’re doing out here in Nevada. I looked into the team a little before I came here and it seems like I am getting here just at the right time to help them break through from kind of a long slump of less-competitive seasons. We are 14-7-1 right now, which is already more wins than they had in the entirety of S60, and only seven short of the win total from last season. So I think they are really putting together something special here, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

That said, I still think it’s absolutely whack that I fell far enough for them to draft me in the first place. It might end up being a real blessing in the end, because I am already loving it here and really enjoying being part of the team, but also they traded down before they picked me?? Like they knew I was still going to be there later in the second? I am pretty determined to prove wrong everybody who passed on me before that, though, and I’m just going to use that as motivation for myself.

So that’s the situation right now. We are in the middle of a long road trip right now - we play Anchorage and Detroit this week and then we head back home for a bit. I am hoping we can pull out some big wins here; we have kind of struggled on the road so far this season but we have won half of our four games on the road so far this trip so hopefully we’re putting it together there.

I’ll write more later when I have more to talk about!

Get good.
[Image: zthmjQm.png]

mer · 11-17-2021, 07:44 AM

Yay! First bleg!

Evok · 11-17-2021, 11:09 AM

nice write up carson

*Carpy48* · 11-17-2021, 01:47 PM

11-17-2021, 07:44 AMmer Wrote: Yay! First bleg!

I agree, well-written blög.

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