Mats Sundin was in a familiar place. Everything was also very different.
It was February 2009. The former captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs was back in his second home, only this time as a member of the opposition.
Sundin had signed with the Vancouver Canucks after 13 seasons under the brightest of spotlights in hockey’s biggest media market.
The Swedish centre jolted out of his hotel bed that cold Saturday morning. Sweat dripped down his brow. In his mind’s eye, a scenario had just played out in the Leafs’ dressing room. The crowd was roaring. His team needed him.
And Sundin’s skate laces kept breaking.
“For a team captain, there’s no worse feeling,” he writes. “It’s my perfect nightmare.”
That scene opens Sundin’s book Home and Away, which tracks a path that began with his parents and two brothers outside Stockholm and eventually led to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
He dives into the pressures and anxieties of being the first European …