Sundin reflects on hockey career, family life in new book

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It wasn’t quite a packed arena, but judging by the eager group of blue-and-white-clad fans whose line snaked through the aisles and displays at Indigo in Sudbury on Saturday, Mats Sundin is still very much a draw.

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To his 12-, 10- and seven-year-old children, however, the former Toronto Maple Leafs captain is just Dad, a man whose final star turn on NHL ice happened years before they were born. They may one day come close to experiencing their father’s playing career first-hand, however, when they pick up his recently released memoir, Home and Away.

“They don’t know anything about my hockey career, really — and they don’t care, either,” laughed Sundin, moments before his signing event in the Nickel City.

“I hope in three or five years, they going to be able to read the book and say hey, our dad, he was a pretty good hockey player.”

Written with Amy Stuart, Home and Away was published through Simon and Schuster on Oct. 22.

Having fielded several requests for an autobiography in recent years, the now 53-year-old from Sollentuna, Sweden felt the timing was finally right to tell the story of his rise from chasing his brother across a local lake near their family home to finding international prominence as the Quebec Nordiques’ first-overall draft choice in 1989.

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Within the pages of Home and Away, Sundin writes for the first time about the experience of uprooting his life in Sweden to pursue a hockey career overseas. He

recalls his surprise at being made a No. 1 pick, his successful transition to the NHL in those first few years in Quebec, and his high-profile trade to Toronto in exchange for beloved captain Wendel Clark.

As hinted by the book’s title, Sundin felt both at home and from away during those early seasons in Toronto as he worked to gain acceptance in the world’s toughest hockey market. He emerged as one of the game’s elite centremen en route to spending 18 years and 1,300 games in the big leagues, mostly in Toronto, and earned a special place in the hearts of fans. 

Even after he was named captain in 1997, Sundin remained a soft-spoken star who chose to lead by example on the ice, believing he could never as anyone to work harder than he did.

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“One of the things that really stuck out when me and Amy Stuart did this was what a different world it was in the ’80s, compared to today, how we grew up,” Sundin told The Sudbury Star. “The struggles you have as a parent with your kids, like I do now with my own kids, it’s a completely different world with the Internet — the whole world is connected. If there’s news in Canada or in Sweden, the whole world knows it.

“You can follow hockey right now and kids in Sweden, they want to go to the National Hockey League and play. When I grew up, we barely knew anything about it. We didn’t know anything about the draft or how the NHL worked.”

A man who cherished his family, Sundin gained even more appreciation while writing his memoir for the safe, supportive environment he and his brothers had growing up.

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“The 7 a.m. Sunday morning practice, driving around, but no pressure,” he said. “When I look today, at my kids, the pressure starts to creep down in ages, in terms of all sports, not only hockey. There’s a lot of pressure from coaches and all that. The most common question I get is what made you a good hockey player, how come you played hockey, and I hope the reader is going to pick up some things there. You can’t force those things. It has to be the passion from within that’s going to prevail.

“It’s going to get serious soon enough. As soon as the kids get into their teens, it does get more serious. There’s more practice, there’s more demand in terms of whether you’re going to continue to play hockey.”

In Home and Away, Sundin also seeks to give fans a better understanding of the relationship between a captain and a coach, of the ups and downs and inner workings in the dressing room of a team like the Leafs.

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“Those are the fundamentals we tried to build the book around,” he said. “I hope the reader is going to enjoy it.”

Since retiring as a player in 2009, Sundin has made it a priority to keep in touch with the people who followed his career, like those who have packed bookstores during his current tour.

“Maybe because of the background I come from, I realize how fortunate I was to have my big passion, hockey, to become my job and to take me out in the world,” he said. “The fans we have been meeting this week are the ones who are supporting us and not only that, they’re paying for tickets and coming to the games and that connection has always been important for me.”

In 2012, he started the Mats Sundin Fellowship, a foundation which supports an elite medical research exchange between the University of Toronto and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

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“When I retired, it was important for me to give back to the community in Toronto, which has given me and my family so much, and also in Sweden, where I grew up,” Sundin said.

“The Toronto Maple Leafs are very active in the community. They go to SickKids hospital, they’re out in different schools and I think it’s a very important role.”

A full 15 years since he hung up the skates and 16 since he last wore the Maple Leafs logo, he remains amazed at the support for the team, not just in the GTA, but across Ontario.

“I come back on a book tour 16 years later and we meet so many fans, there’s Sundin jerseys out there and die-hard Maple Leaf fans,” he said with a smile. “It has been humbling for me and it’s great to be here in Sudbury, as well.”

For more about Home and Away, visit simonandschuster.ca.

[email protected]

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