Sweden

- We arrived in Sweden on September 19th, 2013. Flew into Gotenberg and begun our two our journey up to Stromstad, Sweden, about 2 hours north. Met Kent who was a funny jolly man, big and rosie cheeks. The first day we got to our apartment, a 3 bed room with a room for Jon and us. Our car was quite funny to see since it had ads all over it with our names all over the side. That night we had our first practice with the A-Lag team and it was pretty good hockey.

- Tuesday Sept 24th, we got to meet with the town Mayor of Stromstad. We got a personal tour from him around the great hall and city hall. He actually turned out to be an old professional that played hockey in Germany, got out first skate with him the next Sunday.

- Weds. Septh 25th we had our first match vs Munkadel away. Their town is supposedly what we would call rednecks here. It was actually one of the coldest ice rinks in Sweden, and proven to be true. It was our first preseason game so we wanted to make sure we won it. Their team is one of our big rivals, since we are so close, and the hitting and intensitiy was definitely there. We won the game 5 to 3, but they were leading 3 to 2 going into the third. Rules in Sweden for penalties are quite different, adn I guess they ahd just changed them this year. Basically any kind of stick work gets called as a penalty. I found out the hard way in the 3rd, when I got a hooking call and yelled at the ref. I guess yelling at the ref is instantly called here as well since I got a 10 min misconduct. I scored the first goal of the game in the beginning of the second when we were on penalty kill. One of our players chipped the puck up out of the zone and I was gone on a break away. I made a few shoulder moves put it in fiv hole. The guys made sure and jumped off the ice to go get the puck for me since it was my first goal ever in Sweden adn it is tradition to grab the puck. 

- Thursday Sept 26th - our second preseason game back-to-back vs Munkadel IK. This was a home game and we had a pretty good crowd of around 100 people. The kids all sat together in one section and they were all beyond excited when I did anything at all - it's fair to say they love me! In this game i scored the first goal of the game again but this time in the first period. My first goal i was skating it down the right side with a defenseman right on me, I took a shoot from the top of circles that just beat the goalie 5 hole again. My second goal was in the 2nd period, we were on the powerplay and I was on the right hand side at the bottom of the circles working the overload. Our d man passed the puck to me down low i made 2 quick steps and just through the puck on the net, and beat the goalie down low again. The goalie wasnt all that great down low, since that was how we were scoring on him all night. After this goal, I hear the kids in the crowd going crazy so I made sure and pointed to them, as soon as I pointed ot all the kids after scoring, they went absolutely crazy jumping out of their seats yelling "Ryan Bahl!!" got to love the Lions HC kids here, they are raelly great! It's funny when we just randomly hanging out at the rink before practices, after games, whenever, they crowd around Jon and I and are so very interested in us. You can tell they don't get many visitors from anywhere, and although their english isnt very good they are great. We communicate by typing in our names on youtube on their phones or on instragram so they can look us up. The people of the town say that they really appreciate us being with and hanging out with the kids. In the 3rd, one of my teammates Kenn Nilsson told me that i should go score a hat trick this shift, and wouldn't you know, they very next shift I went out and just overpowered a rebound in the net. I was stoked to have had a hat trick in my very second game, however, when I turned around after the celly, the ref was motioning that it was no goal. Apparently our player had run the goalie and they disallowed my hatty, kind of bullshit. The game was just as intense as the first and we barely snuck out a win 5-4 late in the 3rd. In this game I had 4 PIM, both penalties were against a little fucking weasel player #11 who looked to be 15 , but it turned out he was actually 25 and wearing a full cage. Somehow he knew I spoke English and would skate by and chirp me every change he got. Once he skated by and said I had bad stick work, and that I was basically a dirty player always hooking him and slashing. As he skated by I gave him a poke on the back of his legs so he instantly loss all balance and fell on his ass, instantly the refs arms flew up. I exchanged a few words with the weasel and went to the box. Later in the 3rd, it was almost a perfect situation, he came down on me 1 on 1 and i got so excited i almost popped a boner. As he crossed the blue line, I think he realized who I was when I came leaping through the air shoulder first, just crushing him. Kudos to him though, as he actualyl got a shot off on net. When he finally picked himself up off the ice he skated over and asked if I ever played with my shoulder or if I hit with my stick everytime. I told him to fuck off and stop talking to me. Again, just a few shift laters we were lucky enough to take a face off against each other. The puck was dropped and play started, I ended up following up as my man in zone as well as ended up poking the puck out of the zone from him. He threw his arms up like I had cheap shotted him again, so as we both skated for the puck out of the zone I gave him a good whack across his legs and like the little weasel he was, he fell to one knee like I had ended his career. As the ref skated me to the box again, the weasel followed us running his mouth. I managed to break away from the ref for a second to give the weasel a little stick spear to the gut. I was actually suprised I only got 2 minutes for the original slash, but it all worked out since this motivated me to get on the ice and score that 3rd goal that didn't count so maybe that's why the ref didnt give me the goal, because i was driving him crazy. All-in-all it was a good game and I'm currently leading the team in 3 goals and 16 PIM in 2 games, pretty typical from me.

- Saturday Sept 28th- we ended up going to the Park Restaraung one of our favorite spots. The owner is a guy named Daniel who makes our food for road trips with the team, and he was a cool dude. We had some beers there and decided that it was time to go check out the sports bar down the road since they turned hockey off. On the way out we saw some happenings at the irish pub kind of down the street. Soo glad we ended up going there. There was a live band, which is pretty typical of Irish Pubs. This place was an all in one hotel, casino, live bands, and bar. We endedu p grabbing a table next to two nice looking Swedish girls for Jon, so that he could talk to them. Jon is a shy guy so it never actually happened, but I definitely was trying to get them to come over. Before anything could happen, and while Michaela had mysteriously ended up going off to the casino to gamble for some of the night, two older (40+) Norwegian ladies had stumbled over to us. They were beyond drunk and hammered, they kept talking to us in Norwegian but we did not understand, finalyl we got the one lady to speak english. After a few minutes of mummering and whatever she said, she pretty much directly offered to take either of us home and fool around with us. I was quite flattered I told her, but I told her i had a wife. She was actualyl funny because she accussed me of lying since she didnt see anyone here with me, and I actually didnt have any proof since M was off gambling and playing black jack. I think after a bit of them getting denied by us, she eventually got mad and stumbled off to go have a cigarette. Did i mention this lady fell down on the floor twice throughout the night, you could tell the whole bar was laughign and looking at them do ridiculous stuff. We definitely had the bars attention shifted to us when they came over and started hitting on us. Actually the two original girls gave us more attention too since they saw what was happening. As soon as they left for the cigarettes Michaela came back over from gambling, it was beyond perfect timing. It was crazy that they had literally just missed each other. The night ended with the 3 of us pretty drunk and stumbling back up the way to our apartment. I kept telling Jon that he would have soo many stories if he had taken the Norwegian ladies home. I don't think he was into it though, and said that maybe if it was 5 months and if he hadnt got laid, then he would consider it, but for us being a week in, it was a little too much too soon. 

- Sunday Oct 6th - Preseason finished up for us with one more game, our record was 3 and 0 for training matches, I would finish with 4 goals and 2 assists, 6 points. Later I would find out that i had a much better preseason than the start of my regular season, fuck me..

- Friday Oct 11th - The start of our regular season started at home vs Uddevalla HC, they were a big strong team that could score some goals. The game was very hard faught and we ended up losing 8 to 7 in one of the closest matches we've played yet. I had scored one goal as my way of contributing in this game. We were on a power play, our defenceman Marcus through the puck down to me, where I was waiting on the goal line, and just did a partial rap about, beating the goalie low. At this point it was 8 to 6 so I brought us back to within one, making the game much more interesting! We finished the game off on a 6 on 4, due to one of their guys getting a penalty, but we were unable to score.

- Tuesday Oct 15th - We hit the road on our road trip to Stenungsund HF, a hard fucking name to pronounce. We heard this team was one of the best in our division and it proved true. We ended up losing 7 to 3 in one of our worst games of the season. We took way too many penalties and I was unable to score - my first game in Sweden without a goal. I did however get an assist, so I was able to provide one point at least. The team was big, fast and had some of the top goal scorers. Their fans were pretty sweet though, the entire game a group of about 40 of them all sat together singing, chanting and playing loud drums - the way a European sports match should be. Although they only had 102 people in the stands, it was always loud and a great atmosphere. Our fans at home in Stromstad are great, but they are just not loud and obnoxious as they are in Stenugsund - maybe we need to start serving more beer. For most games we get about 250 fans, so we record some of the highest numbers of people attending, they are just much quieter and calm. The kid's section is full of junior Lions players who provide for our best fan celebrations.

- Weds. Oct 16 - Lars, a buddy of mine and our company's CEO, came into town so we head up to Fredrikstad in Norway to go hang out with him. I spent the next 3 days, from Wed-Fri, up in Norway doing work and having meetings. I met with our new GreenRope Denmark deparment, Erick Jensen (an older, slow talking man), Joshua Dalgaard (a younger almost hyper professional, who has a suprisingly good memory for one liners and sayings), Lars (we called him Lars squared) and Hans Petter (who turned out to be my favorite of the group). HP as I called him, was the only Norwegian in the group (except Lars Helgeson), the others were Danish guys who drove up. The Norwegians definitely know how to work, they do the 9am-3 or 4pm, then take off for the day, whereas the Danes would start at 6am and work until about 11pm, the most hard working, crazy people I have ever met. Most nights we would work pretty late to make the Danes happy, and would order food in - like pizzas or china boxes. Part of this goes back to how each country does it's business, Norway is a very rich country with tons of oil, so money and business (in general) comes easier for these people, they are able to work not as hard and still make it by. In Denmark the money is harder to come by, since the country doesn't have any natural resources, and the people are required to be much more creative in order to come up with ways of doing business. They are also not as a wealthy of a country, so the people work much harder, and it shown in our meetings every day - the Danes were crazy hard workers and always wanting to do new things, whereas Hans Petter (even though I love the guy!) would walk around getting every one coffee, would leave early for the day, and just hang out talking with people (not really about work stuff). I definitely prefer HP's way of working, I believe if you work too hard you will get burnt out and not be interested anymore, but it definitely wasn't showing for the Danes. The nice thing about hanging out with business professionals is that you always are taken care of. HP took us out for a nice dinner at one of his favorite restaraunts in Sarpsborg/Fredkstad, a nice little Thai place. It was very modern and fancy inside, which you just knew it was going to be good. We are use to thai restaraunts in the states with the neon lights falling off the roof, a strang odor when you walk in and some other stuff like that. This place was super good though! HP order a super spicy dish and I had order some pad thai plate, when the plates actually came out, some how our plates switched and I was stuck with the super spicy dish. I had started eating before we figured out they were switched. Now don't get me wrong, it was super delicious, it was just the next day when I had to go to the bathroom did i regret this good ole switch aroo.

- Saturday Oct 19th - Oh god, what a day this was...