DW.com, a.k.a. Deutsche Welle (German World), offers a translation of a German-language profile of one Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider, discussing Seider’s pandemic-induced season spent with Rogle BK in the SHL:
[Last September’s] when the Red Wings got a call from Sweden. They wound up sending Seider to Rogle BK of the Swedish Hockey League, which did start play as usual in September. The club, based in Angelholm in the south of the country, turned out to be a perfect fit.
“The year in Sweden was incredibly good for me,” Seider told DW.
He gained “a lot of self-confidence” in a league regarded as one of the best in Europe. The games are “very close,” and play tends to be very much “end-to-end” making for highly exciting contests both on the ice and in the stands.
It was there that Seider, who first hit the ice as a 4-year-old in the eastern German city of Erfurt, learned that, after a bad game, the most important thing is to make sure that you “perform at your best” in the following contest.
Not only did Seider succeed at that last season, but his club did, as well. Rogle BK had their most successful season ever, making it all the way to the finals of the playoffs, where they fell four games to one to the Vaxjo Lakers. In something of a consolation prize, Seider was named the league’s top defenseman.
His next stop was the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship in Latvia, where Seider helped Germany finish in a respectable fourth place on his way to being named the top defenseman at the tournament. Seider’s performances in Sweden and at the Worlds didn’t go unnoticed by Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill.
“The fact that he got those accolades in Sweden and the World Championship gives you confidence that he can do a good job,” Blashill told DW at a recent press conference. “How good and how quickly he would become an impact player, we didn’t know.”
This past summer, Seider traveled to Detroit, determined to make the Wings as a top-four defenseman — the AHL and Europe simply weren’t options anymore.
Deutsche *Welle* [German (acoustic) Wave]