Athlete Bios
Hockey
Zetterberg plays central role on Swedish team
Last Updated: Monday, February 8, 2010 | 12:33 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
At 29, Henrik Zetterberg has an Olympic gold medal, an IIHF World Championship and a Stanley Cup on his résumé. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)Henrik Zetterberg is the very embodiment of the best in Swedish hockey: successful, industrious, skilled, clean and tough.
So perhaps it should not come as a surprise his chances to play at the 2010 Olympics were put in jeopardy by a hard check - from a fellow Swede.
It happened on Dec. 17, 2009, with Tampa Bay playing Zetterberg's Detroit Red Wings. Zetterberg was levelled with a hard but clean body check from fellow Swedish national team member Mattias Ohlund. The check resulted in a slight separation of Zetterberg's left shoulder, putting him out of action for a few weeks.
"It was a clean hit," Zetterberg said. "I reached for the puck instead of going for his body, and he made a good hit. Next time I won't do the same thing."
A fitting response from Zetterberg. Part of the gritty generation of Swedes that followed the more artistic generation of three decades ago, the shaggy forward from the little town of Njurunda has an Olympic gold medal, an IIHF World Championship and a Stanley Cup on his résumé, and he is only 29.
More important, he makes things happen. No mere passenger when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 2008, he scored the cup-winning goal and was voted the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the most valuable player of the playoffs. And he had a goal and an assist when Sweden won gold at the 2006 Winter Games final with a 3-2 victory against Finland.
Zetterberg grew up playing soccer and hockey but settled on hockey in his early teens.
"I'm from up north in Sweden and hockey is bigger up there than soccer, so it was an easy choice," he said.
He went on to play for Timra IK and helped the team move up to the Elitserien, the top league in Sweden.
The Red Wings' extensive European scouting system took note of Zetterberg and drafted him 210th overall in 1999 - one of the all-time steals. He made his debut with the Wings in 2002, and his 22 goals made him the runner-up in rookie-of-the-year voting. His scoring totals have risen almost yearly since (with time off to return to Timra and be the Elitserien's top scorer during the 2004-05 NHL lockout), and through the end of the 2008-09 season he had 183 goals, 222 assists and 405 points to his credit.
In Detroit, Zetterberg is an essential component of what was the club's Swedish Five, at least until Mikael Samuelsson left the Red Wings last summer. Four members of that quintet will star for the Tre Kronor in Vancouver: Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom up front, Nicklas Lidstrom and Niklas Kronwall in the back. Samuelsson, to the surprise of some, was not selected for Sweden's national team.
