CALGARY — Rasmus Andersson’s connection to international hockey goes far beyond his appearance at the under-18s.
Thanks to his father, Peter, it’s much more tangible than that.
“I remember picking my dad up at a train station when we were younger, and he came home with a (Mats) Sundin stick, a (Peter) Forsberg stick and a bunch of others for me and my brother,” said the Flames defenceman of a return trip from one his dad’s four appearances for Sweden at the world championships.
“He has three gold helmets and medals around the house, so my brother and I would put them on and head outside to play with those sticks all the time.
“It was a pretty unique way to grow up, as we saw all that stuff. He talked about playing at the worlds and the Olympics quite a bit, so it was always something you dreamed about.
“It’s pretty cool to finally get to represent my country like he did.”
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Even cooler would be if he returned from Montreal/Boston in two weeks as a 4 Nations Face-Off champion, with a bag full of sticks for his young kids, Benji and Lucy.
“No, not a stick collector, unfortunately,” he shrugged.
“It’s something I probably want to do, but I’m not very popular around the league, so it’s gonna be tough asking a few players for a stick. We’ll see.”
As always, his father has some salient advice.
“Maybe he can ask somebody else to do it for him,” laughed Peter from his home in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he says being popular only matters inside your own locker room.
“I tell you one thing, he’s a really good teammate. If you have him on your team, you love him. If you play against him you probably hate him.
“He has no issue with that.
“He’s not the only player like that.
“I was probably the same, to be honest.”
Peter goes a step further, suggesting that without the swagger, emotion, personality and dialogue Rasmus injects into his game, he wouldn’t be in the NHL, let alone Team Sweden.
“For him, it’s very important to have that — that’s the reason he plays in the best league in the world,” said Peter, 59, who won silver and two bronze at the worlds as a fiery defenceman who also played 47 NHL games with the Rangers and Panthers.
“It’s been like this since he was little. I honestly picked him up off the ice and kicked him off twice because his behaviour wasn’t what I expected it to be when he was a young kid.
“Sometimes he’d get ten minutes for telling the refs to go somewhere else.
“He was in the penalty box way more than he should be as a kid for talking too much on the ice.
“But obviously, he learned you don’t win many games in the penalty box.
“It’s a thin line of being that player and usually ending up on the good side of it.”
Asked why he didn’t teach his son not to stare, he chuckled over his son’s trademarked goal celebration.
“I don’t know where he got it from; it’s not from me,” he laughed.
“I didn’t stare. I hardly scored!
“It’s nothing bad. It’s just a funny thing. And I think most of the people take it in a funny way, they don’t get upset about it.
“It went pretty big. It’s even on the news back here in Switzerland and Sweden.”
In the summer, Rasmus and his father discussed how important it was to get off to a good start, putting him on the radar of Team Sweden management who had tough decisions to make on their vaunted blue line.
Forced to decline a handful of invites to the worlds due to two child births, his wedding, an injury and playoff commitments, Rasmus will be making his first national team appearance in over ten years.
“Everyone in Sweden just thinks that I don’t want to represent my country because I’ve never gone, and it’s not the case at all — it’s just always been bad timing,” said the Flames’ only representative at the four-team tourney.
“For all of us growing up in Europe, it was the national team you dreamed about. And then you realized when you were 13, 14, 15, ‘Oh, there’s an NHL too.’ I obviously knew about it because Dad played in the NHL for a couple years, but for sure, this means a lot to me.”
His mere selection has been a boost to his confidence, which is something that will grow as the 28-year-old realizes he can hang with the big boys.
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“International tournaments do a lot of other things too, like help you stay motivated because you want to be one of the guys picked all the time,” said his dad, who can’t attend, as he couldn’t convince former Flames coach Geoff Ward to give him time off as assistant coach of Lausanne HC.
“It’s a dream for every player to skate out there with a national team jersey on.
“Even though it’s not a World Championships or an Olympics, it’s a taste, and hopefully in the future he can be part of those.
“It will be so fun to watch him.”
Although a bunch of Swedish hopefuls met up in Stockholm last summer for an information session and social gathering, Rasmus knows relatively few of his Tre Kronor teammates outside of William Nylander, Adrian Kempe, Gustav Forsling and Elias Lindholm.
He’ll be making plenty of fast friends.
Until the games start, that is.
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