INSIDE HOCKEY

Here’s a newsflash for you. Peter Forsberg is human. Not on the ice. Despite foot problems, or skate problems, however you want to view it, his performance since coming to the Nashville Predators February 15th has been solid, his command of the ice what you’d expect from a guy many say is the best hockey player in the world right now.

We’re talking about off the ice, where, we discovered after the Kings-Nashville contest on Saturday, Peter Forsberg is human. Surprise! Actually, what that should say is, he’s a remarkably nice human, honest and forthright and willing to josh with reporters after a game.

So in the interest of doing what our name says, and getting you “inside hockey,” we’d like to report our observations after spending ten minutes following Saturday’s Nashville-Los Angeles game listening in while people asked Forsberg questions as he sat in his locker stall. (Of course, we asked a couple ourselves.) We’ll let you in on the conversation in a second. First, the numbers.

Forsberg scored his first points as a Predator a week after he got to the team, an assist and the game-winning goal on February 24th against Minnesota. His point total in a Predators uniform is now at six, counting three assists he notched against the Kings in a 6-3 Nashville win on Saturday in LA.

He has also steadily ramped up his ice time, from over nineteen minutes a game to twenty-one and a half on Saturday against the Kings. His high thus far: 24:16 against Columbus. (Which might make you ask why he’s playing that many minutes against the Blue Jackets? We don’t know, either, though the record shows Nashville winning 4-3, in a shootout.)

His season’s numbers are 12-34-46, and he has appeared in 47 games. That’s not spectacular, but actually, it’s not that far off his lifetime numbers, 862 points in 687 games. That’s 1.25 points a game. On that scale, he should have 58 points this season, which would put him third on Nashville’s squad behind Paul Kariya (65) and Steve Sullivan (60).

Forsberg is obviously on the ice to put the puck to other scorers and put the puck in the net himself, but he’s there for more than that. Forsberg is there because he can control a game, making its pace what he wants it to be. Scoring points is not incidental, but it’s not the whole story on the ice.

Saturday against LA, he was particularly clear about enforcing his will on the Kings on the power play. He carried the puck into the offensive zone, or grabbed it at the boards, and simply waited, always moving, until his teammates got open. Then he floated it right onto the sweet spots of their sticks. Think of your dad on Christmas morning—he didn’t care about his own presents; he just wanted you to enjoy yours. That’s what this guy contributes.

So you might think that a superstar, which this guy is (why else would Nashville give up two players, Scottie Upshall and Ryan Parent, as well as both first- and third-round picks in this year’s draft, a trade which SI.com called a win for the Predators), would be above the need to delay his shower while reporters peppered him with questions.

You might think that his body language would say, “Alright, folks, a couple more, and that’s it.”

You might figure that he’d be looking around for the Nashville PR rep to rescue him, give him a chance to hit the bikes or grab a drink with the familiar “That’s all guys—we gotta get him on the bus.”

You’d be dead wrong.

After most of his teammates had made their way to the showers, Forsberg sat at his locker spot, feet stretched out, and he smiled, looked everyone in the eye, acknowledged each new person who wandered up, and answered every question put to him. Even when new people approached with the time-honored, “I’m sorry if you’ve already been asked this before, but what about your feet/the trade/the playoffs,” he just kept smiling, and he answered again, posing his responses in fresh language every time.

Anyone who has read much hockey commentary, or seen any more than one between-periods interview, knows that hockey players rarely say much that’s not on the script. How many times have you read, “Yeah, we played with energy out there tonight.” “Yeah, we worked our system, got in on the forecheck, got a good effort from our grind guys”?

Practically every time you read the sports pages, that’s the kind of stuff you find. But Forsberg didn’t seem willing to deal in clichés. Instead, he gave answers to questions that were fresh, candid, and often accompanied with a joke. He took the time to be real, in other words, and to make those gathered around him like they were real too, not just machines programmed to ask questions and jot down the pearls of wisdom doled out in response.

Let’s back up a step. Our first impression upon approaching the 33 year-old native of Ornskoldsvik, Sweden was of a guy who feels comfortable in his role, someone who’s glad to take the responsibility which comes with being the star.

Physically, despite the battles he has fought which have cost Forsberg injuries to almost every part of his body and even the loss of an organ (that’s the spleen), he looks remarkably healthy. His face is unmarked. He teeth look to be his own. And those famous feet—they were encased in socks, but they looked OK to us. His skates were sitting on the floor next to him, and it appeared that the right one was a couple of sizes bigger than the left. He wears an orthotic in that boot, someone said by way of explanation in the hallway afterwards.

“OK, you’re thinking, what about the questions he answered?”

When asked how he’s been feeling of late, he was a kind of funny-cagey. “Why, I feel twenty,” he said with a smile.

“That’s what you told us last year,” one of the gathered scribes announced.

“Then nothing much has changed,” the player replied, again with a smile. And he doesn’t appear to have worn the time anything but gracefully. But here’s what you should take from this exchange: Peter Forsberg does not have to apologize to anyone for what he’s given to the National Hockey League. But he’s not going to remind you of it, nor is he going to brush off the question with a canned response. Hence his repartee, which it was obvious, at least to us, was being enjoyed as much by him as by those asking the questions.

Asked about coming to Nashville, he said, “Coming in, of course, everyone is asking ‘Will he take my ice time?’ but this year, other guys, like [Bill] Guerin, have moved teams, and that’s just part of coming to a new team.”

Again, he leaves it up to you to decide what this means. When the follow-up was, “What did Barry [Coach Trotz] tell you he wanted from you?” Forsberg said, “I’m not going to tell you anything about that.” But his grin as he said it was so disarming that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t willing to go down that road.

“But it was not my plan to leave Philadelphia in the first place. We’ll see what happens at the end of the year. It was a tough year there. But I was a part of that, too.”

Again, it wasn’t that he was saying that the Flyers’ poor performance was his fault that was remarkable. You hear that all the time from team’s leadership players. It’s what they’re supposed to say. But with this guy, it was the way he said it—his regret was real.

His next sentence turned the corner, “I’m here now.” The implication—he’s willing to take the responsibility for the price his new team paid for him. But our point is that he didn’t say that in so many words. He just meant it in his simple response.

As for the style his new team plays, “It’s very mobile, getting the puck up right away. These guys were at the top of the league when I came in—I’m not going to try to do too much.”

Something he said later qualified that a little bit. “When you get traded like that, everything starts all over again. All of a sudden, you have pressure to score points, especially at mid-season. When I got there, the first four games were at home.”

Because of that, “It’s great to get out here on this western swing. We’ll have a couple of days off, with the guys, too,” the implication being that with the pressure of the home crowd in abeyance, he and his new squad will bond.

Looking ahead to Sunday night in Anaheim, which promises to be a rough-and-tumble contest reprising the nasty game played in Nashville February 3rd, he said, “I have no clue what happened last game, so you can’t ask me what’ll happen there.”

At that point, a couple of Swedish-speaking writers stepped to the forefront, and Forsberg’s nearly American-sounding English gave way to his native tongue. Who knows but that the questions were the same—it didn’t seem to matter to number 21. He answered them anyway. We said thank you and nodded. Forsberg nodded back and continued.

You might think this is a crazy thing to say, but if Peter Forsberg doesn’t score another goal all season, but keeps playing like he does and acting with the kind of poise he does in the room, Nashville will have spanked Philadelphia in that trade. You just can’t underestimate a guy who brings success with him, as Forsberg does.

Will the fans in Nashville appreciate what they have? Perhaps most certainly if he brings them a Stanley Cup. If he doesn’t, then those who care in Tennessee will probably be complaining about what was given up to get him.

That, in our opinion, would be their loss, because whether he’s there for a few months or a couple of years or more, Forsberg is going to take his Nashville teammates to school, not on purpose, but just because he is who he is. The maturity and poise they see modeled in his demeanor will turn them into a team which not only has the strength to win games, and maybe even the final game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but also has the poise to look like champions. You can buy that—Nashville did by giving up a lot to get Forsberg—but the cost isn’t something that should cause regret. Win or not, the Nashville Predators have made a move in getting Peter Forsberg which says that they get it. They’re no joke.

Memphis has a King. Now, so does Nashville.

Kings Notes

Anze Kopitar did not dress on Saturday, and according to Coach Crawford after the game, he likely will not travel on the team’s upcoming road trip. He has a “strain” in Crawford’s words, an “upper body injury” in official team lingo, and Crawford said that in the club’s judgment, it’s best that he stay home and be treated by the team’s group of doctors.

Lubomir Visnovsky did not play either after blocking a shot late in the going Thursday night. (Of course, he also went out on his injury a couple of minutes later and set up the winning goal!) He did not skate Friday, then tried his ankle in warm-ups before the Nashville game and decided he wasn’t ready. But he should be back on the ice by the time the team meets Chicago on Tuesday.

The Kings now go on a four-game road trip, returning to Staples Center on March 12th to play Edmonton.