My crazy three weeks that eventually lead me to Vastervik.
It was the beginning of July, and at the time I was completely set on continuing my professional hockey career in North America. I had just come off of a good season with the Milwaukee Admirals, in the AHL, and I expected to be back there or some where else in the league.
As all professional hockey players know, your plan does not always work out the way that you were hoping.
Once I had learned that I would again, most likely, have to split time between the AHL and ECHL, I decided that it was no longer worth continuing my professional career in North America. I did not want to go backwards after spending 80% of last season in the AHL, and wanted to make it a permanent home, but as I said before the plan does not always work that way.
It was the beginning of the second week in July when I decided I was going to move onto the European path, and see where life took me.
I was very late onto the Euro hockey scene for the upcoming season, since preseason started in about three weeks. Not many teams had roster spots available for me and I began to get nervous.
I was messaged by Emil Georgsson, the General Manager for Vasterviks IK, and I was very excited. A couple days after the initial talks I flew to California to visit my grandfather, and the time difference made it very difficult to communicate to Emil in Sweden. After back and forth talks we could not come to a deal initially. I again was without a home just a few weeks before the European seasons were supposed to start, and I began to get very nervous again.
After a week in California I came back home to Delaware, and Emil had reached out again. At this point I was willing do whatever it took in order to go to Sweden and play in HockeyAllsvenskan.
I knew that it was a very good league for a North American to begin their career, and I wanted to make it work. I was extremely happy that we were able to get a deal done just a couple weeks before the season.
I also had plan to spend a week down in Mexico with my girlfriend.
So my girlfriend, Elle, and I went down to Tulum, Mexico for a week at the end of July. I was planning for this trip to be in August, since I expected to be playing in North America again, but now with the change of plans I moved the trip up to the end of July.
Down in Mexico I asked Elle to marry me, and she said yes! Now after being engaged for three days, we came home to Delaware, and I immediately began packing as I was leaving for Sweden five days later. Elle was going to stay back with our two dogs that we have together.
I spent the first three months here in Sweden without her and the dogs, but now the whole family is here and living happily in Vastervik!
It was a very exciting, scary, and emotional few weeks that lead to me playing in Sweden and being engaged, but as I look back on it and view is without stress, it was three of the most important weeks of my life and I couldn’t not be happier about how things turned out.
Trevor Mingoia Spelare i Västervik
