Mats Sundin
Mats Sundin
Mats Johan Sundinis a Swedish former professional ice hockey player who played the majority of his career in the National Hockey League, retiring in 2009. Originally drafted first overall in 1989, Sundin played his first four seasons in the NHL with the Quebec Nordiques. He was then traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1994, where he played the majority of his career, serving 11 seasons as team captain. At the end of the 2007–08 season, Sundin had been the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionHockey Player
Date of Birth13 February 1971
CityStockholm, Sweden
CountryCanada
They are one of the hottest teams in the league. We'll take a win any way we can.
It is almost must-win for us in this stretch because we're going to need them. We're going to be on the road a lot in January (nine out of 13 games) and play a lot of teams above .500. We'll need this stretch as a foundation to play the teams at the top of the league.
I believe in my heart that we have a good enough team to make the playoffs and a good enough team to beat Ottawa.
I'm excited about having the team over, ... I know there are a lot of Leafs fans in Sweden and in Europe, so this is a great chance for the European audience to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs. I think that's the most fun thing about this whole thing. We are going to focus on practicing and preparing for the season, just the same way we would if we were somewhere around Toronto. I'm sure we are going to have some chances at night to have some dinners and take a look around Stockholm, but most of the focus is going to be on practicing and getting ready.
As a team we are scoring some goals, but there's still a lot of work to do,
There's so many games left, our only concern is our own play. We know we can play better than we did in January (3-9-2) and we can beat the teams we need to beat to make it in (the playoffs).
Our only focus from now on is to turn this thing around. We have to get back to playing the way we did. The way we're playing right now, it hasn't even been two weeks. Before that we were playing really good hockey and we could beat any team in the league. We have to climb back to that, and it's going to take all of us in the dressing room. We can't look at the standings right now.
If anyone from my team deserves to go, he's the guy,
Now, it's a little more my respnsibility to answer for what's going on with the team and explain why we're doing well and why we're not doing well.
Getting the puck out of our own end is a victory right now.
It's been a long wait for Swedish hockey.
I think we knew with even 25 games to go that it would be dog race to the end. Obviously we have two big games in Montreal, but we have to try and keep winning until the end.
That's exactly what you try to do on the power play - put the puck on the net.
I hope (Canadians) cheer for us. We'll take any support we can get. We're going to need it.