Moving Forward In Hockey And Life

SUNRISE, Florida -- Kraken defenseman Adam Larsson doesn’t waste time pondering what should be the NHL’s third longest active Ironman streak. 

Sure, the only reason Larsson isn’t credited with 501 consecutive games played is because he skipped one contest two years ago after 343 straight to be there for the birth of his daughter, Alba. But Larsson long ago ceased “What Ifs” in favor of what’s real and in front of him; a mantra that’s amply served an NHL career reaching its 1,000th game here Tuesday night against the Florida Panthers. 

Such thinking has helped the righthanded shot defender away from the ice as well, where embracing life’s gifts and overcoming the shattering realities is prioritized by a Swedish native determined to keep moving forward. 

“I mean, the streak wasn’t really important in our lives,” Larsson said of he and his wife, Vera, welcoming their first child. “It’s the biggest moment of your life. Our daughter was all that mattered. So, it was important for me to be there.” 

Larsson, 33, admits fatherhood changed him from when he was a 4th overall pick of the New Jersey Devils in 2011, playing five seasons with them, five more with the Edmonton Oilers and then every game in the Kraken’s history except the one that mattered least. There are days when leaving Alba gets harder than imagined and Larsson starts feeling his hockey age emotionally more than physically. 

“To be honest, I find the road is getting a little harder when it comes to that part,” he said. “Being away from her.” 

Larsson therefore spends as much “family time” as he can with his wife and daughter when not at the rink.  

His own father, Robert, a longtime professional hockey player in Sweden and onetime sixth-round pick of the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, spent years alongside Larsson honing skills and lessons that eventually begat an NHL career now into its second decade. He taught Larsson what it means “to be a pro” and the “proper mindset” it takes. 

“We put in an awful lot of time together,” Larsson said. “He wouldn’t go easy on me. He showed me what I’d be up against and how I had to play. It was tough, but he cared very, very much.

“A big thing for him was that if you’re lying on the ice you shouldn’t be able to play anymore,” Larsson said. “Meaning they should have to drag you off.” 

His parents would remain awake deep into the night watching his televised NHL games from overseas. Sometimes, they’d fly across the ocean to see him play in person. 

That had been the case on a late-January night in Edmonton in 2018, when Larsson’s parents arrived on a transcontinental flight that landed in the evening and they stayed up several more hours with Larsson together happily reminiscing. The next day, Larsson left early for an Oilers morning skate. Partway through, he was handed a phone while still on the ice. His father had collapsed from a massive heart attack at a local grocery store.  

He was taken off life support six days later and died at age 50. 

“You’re not really thinking that this could happen,” Larsson said. “You get a very different view of life after something like that.” 

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Nothing experienced to that point could have prepared Larsson, then age 25, for the days and weeks that followed. He made arrangements to transport his father’s body back overseas. The Oilers then let him fly to Sweden for the funeral and spend time with his widowed mother, Annalie, older brother, Hampus, and younger sister, Julia.  

“They told me to take as much time as I needed and I’m forever thankful for that,” Larsson said.  

The funeral and aftermath were “very hard” as Larsson was still in shock.  

“But it was very beautiful at the same time,” he said. “All the memories he brought to me and my family. I’ll always think of them.” 

As difficult as it was, going through it with his immediate family was something he now views as a gift. Still, about two weeks in, he figured his father would have wanted him to continue playing out his season.  

“I know that’s what he loved for me to do,” he said. “It was important to me.” 

The Oilers welcomed him back with the space he still needed, but also camaraderie he missed. He wanted something, anything, to forget his loss. 

And as time went on, the in-game routines and structure returned to Larsson rather quickly. Things weren’t as quick off the ice. Larsson will never be completely over that winter. Later that season, he was named the Oilers nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy for his perseverance in the face of adversity.  

“You can’t take anything for granted in life,” he said. “I don’t really go that deep into it on a daily basis, but it’s one of those things that reminds you that you just never know. But I try to live. I try to enjoy life as much as I can.” 

That he now does with Vera and daughter Alba, who gets to have the father he no longer does. And with his Kraken teammates, who’ve learned to separate Larsson’s at-times morose stares from his trademarked dry humor. Two seasons ago, they donned t-shirts featuring a photo of Larsson with a bowl haircut during a team win streak that briefly vaulted them back into contention. 

Not everyone would tolerate mockery, good natured or not, let alone an alternate captain and the only player to appear in every game in Kraken franchise history to that point. But it was Larsson. He had the perspective. 

Larsson also had the reputation as a bit of a prankster himself. He’d pulled a locker room prank on Matty Beniers, who got his revenge with the t-shirts. The photo was one Larsson’s wife had taken after cutting his hair a couple of years prior and Beniers somehow got it. 

Beniers didn’t hesitate in going back at someone a decade his senior.

“Lars’s advice since I’ve started has always been, ‘Just be yourself,’” Beniers said. 

One season after Beniers made Larsson a t-shirt parody, he was anointed an alternate captain alongside him. Not surprisingly, Larsson’s comments to him were sparse but meaningful.   

“It was like, ‘You’ve gotten to this place because of the player you are and the person you are outside and in the rink. And whether or not you’ve got a letter on your chest, you’ve got to bring that every day.’” 

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Robert Larsson was a player who brought and left everything he had on the ice during his nine-season, 249-game run with Skelleftea AIK ending in fall 1994, the first three of those in the top-tier of what’s now known as the Swedish Hockey League. He never made the NHL despite being drafted by the Kings. His best offensive showing saw him score 14 goals in 30 games in a lower Swedish pro league the 1992-93 season after Skelleftea was relegated, but his career was done just one year later at age 27 because of knee issues. 

Like his future NHL son, just a toddler when he retired, he was a defense-first advocate. At 6-foot-2, 209 pounds, he was also tough as nails – much like Skelleftia itself, an industrial town of 36,000 tucked way up in a northeast corner of Sweden – and was known for handling the puck with players literally hanging off his arm. 

Swedish flags were flown at half-mast outside the Skelleftea hockey arena when Larsson’s father died. 

For North American hockey fans, it’s difficult to appreciate the weight the local Swedish league carries with supporters. The NHL didn’t fully open itself to European players until the mid-1990s. Prior to that, the only hockey worth watching in Sweden, Finland, Russia and elsewhere – especially during Robert Larsson’s late-1980s peak – was local domestic leagues. 

And that’s what young hockey players living in those countries, even an NHL talent such as Adam Larsson, aspired to. 

“I didn’t really follow the NHL until I got drafted,” Larsson said. “We didn’t have the channels growing up to watch it. I mean, I knew about (Peter) Forsberg and (Willy) Lindstrom and all of those guys. But watching a game at two in the morning wasn’t really my thing. So, it’s more about making the local team. That was your main goal until you realize there’s a bigger picture.” 

So, Larsson aimed to play for the hometown Skelleftia team his father had and that his brother, Hampus, played junior hockey for. He and his brother played two junior seasons together, with Larsson then advancing to the Skelleftia pro squad as its youngest player at age 16 and performing well in two stints for Sweden at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships in 2010 and 2011.

That got Larsson noticed by NHL scouts as the Devils drafted him and vaulted him directly to the NHL that fall at age 18 for 69 games. 

His first defense partner, Andy Greene, was 10 years older than Larsson but helped him work on nuances of the NHL game, much as his father had for years. When Larsson’s dad died, one of the first texts he got was from Greene offering to help in any way he could.  

Larsson upon arriving in the NHL had begun a yearslong tradition of talking to his father by phone after every Devils game. Sometimes, they’d discuss hockey. Other times, just life in general.  

“The whole family is really, really close,” Larsson’s wife, Vera, said. “I know that when Adam moved over, he and his dad were talking all the time, and he was up watching all of Adam’s games in the middle of the night. So, there was a special bond. But the whole family is very close. It’s the same with his brother and sister. They were close too.” 

Vera was introduced to Adam through a mutual friend shortly after the death of Larsson’s father. She’d lost her own father the prior year and they bonded through shared experiences. 

But while she was from big-city Stockholm, Larsson’s upbringing in Skelleftia some 500 miles to the north had given him quite different, somewhat stoic characteristics Kraken fans can likely appreciate.  

“I don’t want to say it was ‘culture shock’,” his wife said. “But he was just very chill. He was just like the typical Skelleftia guy with his energy and calmness.” 

Her first impression quickly changed. 

“He’s the nicest guy,” she said. “I always laugh when people say that he’s so serious because I’m like no, he’s so much fun. He’s so warm and you can always go to him. He’ll always be there for you. For me, he makes me feel so prioritized and seen and loved and he’s so funny. 

“The humor, in the beginning, can come off as a little dry. You know, with the seriousness. But then, he’s a goofy, goofy nice guy.” 

Not goofy enough, though, for Larsson to voluntarily provide the eventual bowl-cut t-shirt photo that Beniers so aptly popularized within the Kraken dressing room. 

Vera said her husband hates going to a hairdresser, so, when they were staying at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Seattle their first Kraken season, he “forced” her to cut his hair. Unfortunately, she used her only available cutting tool -- eyebrow nail scissors -- to do it. 

“So, I posted the photo on my story on Instagram and I think Matty googled it,” she said with a chuckle.  

The rest is history, as is Larsson getting nail scissor haircuts.  

Larsson found his footing with the Kraken, enough to sign a four-year, $21 million extension with the team in summer 2024. That came a year after he’d helped the Kraken upset the Colorado Avalanche in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and nearly the Dallas Stars in a seven-game series after that. That and a seven-game second round loss to Anaheim while playing for the Oilers in 2017 is the closest Larsson has ever been to making a conference final. The Kraken’s unexpected run was built largely off bedrock defensive play led by Jamie Oleksiak and Larsson, who finished 1-2 respectively in hits and blocked shots. Three years later, Larsson is again shooting for the postseason, aware his Kraken stint will soon be “the most I’ve played anywhere” and the responsibility that carries. 

His defensive pairing with Vince Dunn since late in the Kraken’s inaugural season has long been part of that.  

Larsson had enjoyed a close relationship with Swedish defensive partner Oscar Klefbom after being traded to Edmonton in summer 2016 in exchange for Taylor Hall. Oilers fans, hung up on Hall’s touted status as a future superstar, didn’t always appreciate Larsson right away. But he and Klefbom were placed on the top defensive pairing, with Oilers coach Todd McClellan praising Larsson for being a “stabilizing factor” on the blue line as the team took off that spring on its longest playoff run in years. 

Larsson helped shut down San Jose Sharks captain Joe Pavelski in the opening round as the Oilers stunned defending Stanley Cup finalist San Jose.  

By the following season, Larsson became the first Swede in Oilers history named an alternate captain – taking a role vacated when current Kraken teammate Jordan Eberle left for the New York Islanders. Larsson and Klefbom remained a formidable pairing for years and it’s long been rumored the Oilers cutting ties with the veteran in 2020 factored into Larsson’s decision to leave and sign a free-agent deal with Seattle the following summer. 

But Larsson has let it be known he likely would have left Edmonton in any event. Memories of his father’s death hung with him his final seasons there, sometimes every hour of every day. And he knew he had to keep moving forward instead of being haunted by the past. The Kraken offered an escape valve with a four-year, $16 million deal.  

And in Dunn, he found a similar kindred spirit with the four years younger defenseman from Canada that he’d had in Edmonton with countryman Klefbom. 

“Obviously, me and Vince kind of found ourselves early in Seattle days,” Larsson said. “We’ve seen a lot of guys go from here. But I‘m lucky that we’re a couple of guys standing still.” 

Dunn said Larsson was a defenseman he “looked up to” upon joining the Kraken. A player whose defensive style was very different from his offensive-oriented game. There were also “family dynamic” similarities for Dunn, whose parents split when he was young, leaving his mother to care for their family.  

“He’s lost his father and he relies a lot on his mother now,” Dunn said. “And I’m kind of the same way, too. I’ve relied on my mother for a long time.”

Now, they rely on each other on and off the ice. Dunn is a known foodie and often shares videos of his culinary creations with Larsson. But when they get together for mutual dinners, they let Vera do the cooking. Otherwise, Dunn will provide expert guidance on restaurants and chefs he’s gotten to know. It works, as does their on-ice pairing where Dunn supplies the offense and Larsson is there as a backstop when things don’t always go to plan. 

“I think having someone who’s super open-minded and doesn’t judge you for who you are, it’s just easy to become friends with them,” Dunn said. “And it’s not just me. I think everyone’s a very close friend of his in that locker room.” 

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One of Larsson’s hallmarks is that when he does well, no one ever needs to ask about him. Kraken head coach Lane Lambert knows that better than anyone.  

“He’s kind of a piece of glue for us back there,” Lambert said. “Plays hard. Does everything well. Plays defensive hockey, He’s a good penalty killer. He loves a lot of minutes so he’s a huge part of our team.” 

And somebody who, like Lambert, knows about loss. 

Dunn doesn’t subscribe to the theory that Larsson is as attentive as a father because of losing his own dad so suddenly.  

“He really didn’t know what he was getting into becoming a father,” Dunn said. “And I think him and his wife have done a great job of navigating through it. They have a beautiful family. But they’ve always been very grounded.” 

Vera also likes to think Larsson would have been the same type of father regardless of what happened to his own. 

“He always wanted to be a dad,” she said. “He’s been talking about it since we started dating. And so, he’s been really excited about that and it’s such a special bond between Adam and our daughter. He just loves to be with her and hang out with her.”

Likewise, his family will do the same when the Kraken honor his 1,000th game at Climate Pledge Arena. His mother, siblings and their own children will be there, partaking in something long on Larsson’s mind. 

“We have always talked about this,” Larsson’s wife said. “This is huge for us. This is like, our thing we have. It’s been the big goal since 500 games. So, it feels unreal.” 

His 500th was played with the Oilers in a 2019-20 campaign that began with Larsson fracturing his right fibula in Game No. 499 during the season opener. He returned seven weeks later and appeared in No. 500 on Nov. 21, 2019, on the road in Los Angeles.  

He’s never missed another since. Except, that is, when his daughter was born. 

“I still feel bad about that sometimes because it really isn’t fair to him,” Larsson’s wife said with a chuckle. “Like, maybe there was another day I could have tried to wait for it to happen in between games, maybe? I think about it often.” 

All kidding aside, Larsson insists he couldn’t care less about the streak. What matters most to him is having a daughter, one he’d like to think he’d be the same way with even if his father was still around to know her. 

And in any event, Larsson today is indeed known as a player you automatically pencil into every night’s lineup, regardless of whether any official streaks attest to it. The 1,000th game is what now showcases him as the Ironman he was bred to be; one who keeps moving forward, logging the miles, meeting the next challenge and staying out there until needing to be literally dragged off the ice. 

Just as his dad would have wanted it. Of that, Larsson is certain.  

“I think he would be very, very proud.”