from Joe Veleno at DetroitReWings.com,

Hello from Sweden! You're reading it correctly, Sweden. You may remember I wrote my last entry from my house in Montreal, which was pretty unbelievable, but this time around I'm actually writing this blog entry from my apartment in Sweden.

When the last AHL season was officially canceled, I came back to Montreal and spent my time working out and hanging out with my family. It was fun, but as the pandemic dragged on, I became antsy.

I wanted to eventually play competitive hockey and continue my development. So the Red Wings gave me the option to play in the Czech Republic, but it was quite early in the summer and there were just so many unanswered questions of when everything would start. I just wanted to take my time and thought training in the gym was the best thing for me. After my first AHL season, I realized I needed to become stronger. I thought being in the gym was a big part of just getting stronger and that was a big part of my game so I felt that I needed to improve in that area off the ice. Then after a few conversations with Detroit's player development staff, they told me that things weren't looking too good on starting really anytime soon so my agent and the Wings had some contacts over in Sweden and with (Niklas) Kronwall, being in Sweden, they all helped me get to Malmö. The end result, I just wanted to play hockey and I ended up in a pretty good spot.

The way I'm looking at it, this is an exciting time in my career. This could be, for all I know, the last time I come over to Europe. Honestly, it's a great experience talking to some former players who've had this experience coming to Europe, especially Sweden, such an amazing country where the hockey's really good and the culture and all that stuff is quite interesting to get to know.

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