Representing one's country is always a matter of pride, whether it's playing for the national team or a club in international competition. Right now Mattias Janmark is playing for Sweden at the Channel One Cup, but next month he and his Frölunda Gothenburg team will face Kärpät Oulu in the CHL semi-finals.

by Karolina Antosova

PRAGUE – The CHL semi-finals are getting closer and closer, and for the four remaining teams they could be the last two games in the league this season. Frölunda Gothenburg’s Mattias Janmark is looking forward to facing Kärpät Oulu in January, but before that he's getting the chance to play for the Swedish national team at the Channel One Cup. In their first game, the Swedes won 6–4 over the Czechs in Prague, with Janmark scoring the late game-winning goal before 16 348 hostile spectators. It was a great experience for the 22-year-old, who now heads with the rest of his team to Sochi, Russia for the rest of the tournament. 

I guess it wasn’t your first goal in the national team, am I right?

Yes, it was my second goal in the Swedish national team but the first one in the Euro Hockey Tour, so it was really fun to score. Moreover, it was my first game-winning goal.
 
So do you have the puck?

I’m not sure if I have the puck, I’ll see now in the locker room. Anyways, I struggled a bit in the last tournament in Finland, so I was relieved I was able to score now.
 
What do you think about your game against the Czech Republic here in Prague?

Personally, I think I played pretty well and we were strong the first 10 minutes, but then the Czechs took control of the game and scored a couple easy goals. We struggled to come back from that. Fortunately, we scored two quick goals and suddenly were back in the game. Then we had a setback when they scored on the power play, but it’s good that we were able to come back twice and end up winning.
 
During the second period, Daniel Rahimi and Radek Smolenak had a little bit of a serious “talk”. Do you think that incident gave your team more energy?

I don’t know. You have to stand up for your teammates. I don’t think it was a plan or something like that. These kinds of things happen and maybe we took an advantage of it. Maybe it helped us, but I wouldn’t say it was the turning point in the game.

You’re not the only player from Frölunda representing Sweden in the Channel One Cup. One of your teammates is captain Joel Lundqvist. It must be an advantage for you that you know him from Frölunda.

He helps me a lot. He’s been playing for the Swedish national team for a long time, Joel is really experienced. Obviously, we know the each other’s strengths, talk to each other and tell each other what is right and wrong. So that makes it easier.

With Frölunda, you’ve made it to the semi-finals of the CHL. Are you looking forward to that?

Absolutely, it’ll be fun. We’ve come so far in the CHL, so it would be fun to win these two games and, hopefully, play the finals at home and come off winning.

It’ll be a real Finnish–Swedish derby against Kärpät.

We’ve faced two Finnish teams so far in the playoffs and now we’ve got to eliminate the last one, so it’ll be fun to do that.