Öhlund looking for a change of scenery

- Plainly, I want to to try something new. It's going to be fun to see what happens this summer and which NHL teams that are interested.

That is what Vancouver's Swedish defenseman Mattias Öhlund said to Norrländska Socialdemokraten about his future. Öhlund, who has spent all his 11 NHL seasons with the Canucks, will be testing the market on July 1. He doesn't have a favorite team to end up on though. At least not one that he is willing to admit about.

- No, not really. This is a family decision, where a lot factors will play in. But at my age, it would of course be fun to end up in a club with a decent chance at winning the Stanley Cup.

Detroit together with Tomas Holmström?
- That would of course be fun. But it's nothing we have talked about.

To explain that last question: Holmström and Öhlund are from Piteå, a town in northern Sweden, and both have played on the same teams (Piteå HC and Luleå HF) back in Sweden.

Öhlund also says in the article that he will keep on playing in the NHL for another 3-4 years and then head back home to Sweden. Either to his hometown Piteå or to Stockholm, where he has a lot of his friends.
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Icebreakers - the follow-up

I wrote about the charity team Icebreakers in my posts about Peter Forsberg and I thought that it was time to do a follow-up on how it went in the two games the team played this week.

On the Tuesday, they played against SEL team Luleå. Luleå is predicted to finish around the bottom of the SEL this upcoming season and some of their better players weren't playing in the game, so the 11-4 win for the Icebreakers didn't come as a surprise. Forsberg actually ended up being the best scorer in the game with 3 goals and 1 assists, while Vancouver's Mattias Öhlund and Washington's Nicklas Bäckström both had a 3-point game.

I haven't found much info about the Icebreakers game in Turku, Finland, the day after. The challenge they would take on there was a lot harder though as they played a team called the Läkerol Dark Allstars filled with NHLers. Calgary's Miikka Kiprusoff, Montreal's Saku Koivu and Stanley Cup Champion Valtteri Filppula were some of the players on the team and they were actually coached by Mike Keenan.

The only thing I know about the result is that the game ended 5-5 and that the Icebreakers won the shootout which followed.

The Icebreakers also visited and donated toys to children's hospitals in Luleå and Turku during their visits to the cities.

Some links of interest:

• The rosters of LDA and Icebreakers.
• Pictures from the LDA-Icebreakers game.
• The blog of 10-year-old Marcus, who got to drop the puck in the Luleå-Icebreakers game.
• Pictures from the Luleå-Icebreakers game here and here.

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