Alexander Wennberg<\/a> making the roster, and more, all while keeping an eye on his brother Victor Eklund playing at the World Juniors on a nearby television.<\/p>\nEklund on not making Team Sweden for the Olympics\u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hockey, it\u2019s life. You try as good as you can to make a roster. You try to do what you can to make it.<\/p>\n
On where he may have come up short\u2026<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know, to be honest.<\/p>\n
On whether Team Sweden offered that he could be an alternate\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to go into that.<\/p>\n
On whether he felt his timing and momentum was affected by his recent injury\u2026<\/p>\n
Little bit there, but then also after that, I feel like I\u2019ve been going better and better throughout the whole year. So I don\u2019t think that\u2019s something. I did what I could. Didn\u2019t make it. I\u2019m going to work as hard as I can to get us to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
On if he feels like he can\u2019t catch a break\u2026<\/p>\n
I go through a lot of things, in my mental stuff, too. So you learn a lot from it. You learn how to get up and get better, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do.<\/p>\n
On the message from Team Sweden\u2019s staff\u2026<\/p>\n
Gotta keep it personal there. Nothing I want to share here.<\/p>\n
They like what they saw from me. They like how I\u2019ve played this year and that stuff. But anything more than that I\u2019m just going to keep private.<\/p>\n
On if it\u2019s nice knowing there will be future opportunities with Sweden\u2026<\/p>\n
For sure, but it\u2019s nothing I think too much about now. Right now, I\u2019m just trying to focus on the game tomorrow, trying to be a better player, and I want to be a part of the playoff team.<\/p>\n
On feeding extra effort into the San Jose Sharks now\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been like that the whole season, I think. You want to play your heart out every night and you\u2019re working for every guy in here and for our fans to make the playoffs. It would be a great thing for us, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to work for.<\/p>\n
On his happiness for Wennberg making the team\u2026<\/p>\n
Yeah, he\u2019s so deserving of that. This is one of his last chances. So I was really happy for him to get that chance, and he deserves it so much. So I\u2019m happy for him and the family.<\/p>\n
On Wennberg\u2019s game this year\u2026<\/p>\n
With the puck, he\u2019s such a skilled offensive guy, and he doesn\u2019t get credit for enough. He\u2019s one of the best guys I\u2019ve ever seen on boards and how to protect the puck and how to be around there. So as a young player, I would watch him a lot.<\/p>\n
On whether Wennberg could match up against and shut down Macklin Celebrini with Team Canada\u2026<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know. We\u2019ll see about that. We\u2019ll see, but I hope for Sweden to win.<\/p>\n
On watching his brother at World Juniors\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m trying to catch it, while we\u2019re talking. I want to go to a couch now and watch the games.<\/p>\n
On being on Celebrini\u2019s line lately and getting on the scoresheet\u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always good to be getting on the score sheet. As a guy who was trying to do that his whole life, I feel like that\u2019s a big thing. But also in the games, you got to make good plays, I think that\u2019s something I\u2019ve been doing. But obviously our team been taking steps here, and I think we got to just keep going.<\/p>\n
On playing on a line with Celebrini and Igor Chernyshov\u2026<\/p>\n
Two really good hockey players. It feels weird to say that they\u2019re younger than me, but they are, and they\u2019re playing really good hockey. So I\u2019m just trying to play good myself, too.<\/p>\n
On preparing to face the Tampa Bay Lightning\u2026<\/p>\n
Experienced group. Coming here as a young group we want to prove ourselves. So I think that\u2019s a good thing in both ways. We just got to go out there and play our game.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Eklund said he\u2019s \u201cfor sure\u201d got a chip on his shoulder after not being selected to Team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[151388,113110,6515,187992,831,658,187993,385,835,6531,99,187994,6537],"class_list":{"0":"post-386269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-2026-olympics","9":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","10":"tag-alex-wennberg","11":"tag-alexander-wennberg","12":"tag-featured","13":"tag-milan","14":"tag-milano-cortina","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-san-jose-sharks","17":"tag-sjhn","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-team-sweden","20":"tag-william-eklund"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}