Photo by Adrian Dater
ORNSKOLDSVIK, SWEDEN – It’s been a great last few days for big dumb redheaded me. After writing – often only correctly after two or three attempts – about Ornskoldsvik (I swear, I just mis-typed it twice) – all these years, I finally got to visit the hometown of superstar former Av Peter Forsberg. That’s him above, of course, finishing his morning breakfast Wednesday at the Elite Hotel here, a property he co-owns. He was due to catch a flight back to Stockholm in about an hour, on the airline Next Jet – which he also partially owns. It’s as good to be Peter Forsberg as it ever was.
This city of about 35,000 is way north in the country, close to the arctic circle really. There’s not a lot of daylight in the winter – it gets pretty dark by 4 p.m. or so, but it’s a beautiful little place nestled among a harbor and forestland.
Forsberg is going into the Hockey Hall of Fame Nov. 17 in Toronto, and we’ll have MUCH more on him from this visit in the paper leading up to induction day. It’s been an honor to hang out a lot with him and his family in Sweden since arriving on Sunday. Peter has two young children now with fiancee Nicole, a 2 1/2 year old son, Lennox, and a daughter only a few weeks old, Lily.
As my stories will point out, Forsberg has done very well for himself since retiring from the Avs in 2011, with all his business interests. But he’s not just hoarding money. He pours of a ton of it back into the local community.
Unfortunately, Forsberg is still dealing some with injuries from his playing career. His mind is fine, but he’s got a shoulder injury, for instance, that will require surgery within a couple weeks and will prevent him from playing in the old-timer’s game at the Hockey Hall of Fame. He said he first had the shoulder injury from a hit into the boards from behind by Dallas’ Richard Matvichuk in the playoffs way back when, and it was always a bit of a chronic thing. Then, of course, were all the problems with his ankles, especially the right one. I’ll have a lot more about what he really went through to try and play on that thing soon.
Other than my sleep cycle becoming even more royally messed up with the seven-hour time difference here, it’s been a delight to be in Sweden, especially with such a gracious host as Foppa.
