Norstrom Eager After Sweden’s Flop

Olympians are not due to report back to their NHL teams until Tuesday, but Mattias Norstrom said that he will return to the Kings on Sunday after taking three days off to decompress after Sweden’s stunning 4-3 loss to Belarus in the quarterfinals of the Olympic hockey tournament.

“You’re only as good as your last game and my last game was not a fun experience,” the King captain said Friday. “If there’s anything good coming out of this, [it’s that] I’m not tired of hockey. I really look forward to coming back to play for the Kings and winning some games and putting this behind me.”

The loss to Belarus, following the Swedes’ 3-0 sweep through the seeding round, was described as one of the most bitter in Swedish sports history. Sweden had 18 NHL players on its roster, Belarus one.

“You talk about Canada, all the pressure they have on their team,” Norstrom said, “but hockey is a real big sport back home and it gets a lot of media attention. So, if you do well, you get a lot of credit. But if you lose, you take a lot of heat. It’s been pretty ugly back home. It’s not fun, but it’s part of hockey in Sweden.”

A two-time Olympian who helped his country win the gold medal at the World Championships in 1998, Norstrom called the Salt Lake City Games “the best international experience I ever had. I never had so much fun playing.”

Up until Wednesday.

“An ugly way to end it,” he said.

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Eric Belanger, who underwent surgery Jan. 29 to repair ligament damage in his left wrist, resumed skating Thursday and had the cast removed from his wrist Friday. The second-year center hopes to return to practice the last week of March, as scheduled, and return to the lineup in April.

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Jerry Crowe