BLOG: Haas driven to continue making NHL adjustments

EDMONTON, AB - Prior to linking up with the Edmonton Oilers for his first foray into North American hockey, Gaëtan Haas had spent the entirety of his professional career in Europe building a reliable two-way game.

Piece by piece, in the National Hockey League, he'd have to do it all over again.

"It was a lot of new stuff," said Haas to Oilers TV on Wednesday in a video conference call. "Everything was new and I'd never been far away from my hometown, so that was a pretty big trip."

The Swiss forward made the leap to the NHL after signing a one-year contract with the Oilers last summer, accepting with it the terms of the deal and the challenge of adjusting to a completely different continent and competition - both on and off the ice.

"I'd never had a Training Camp with so many players," Haas said. "New city, new language. Sometimes I'm still struggling with English. Everything was new."

"At 27, you don't expect to start in your first NHL game."

Haas was drawing bigger assignments, both in the situations he was put into and the players he was up against.

"In Europe, you don't have that much battle," he said. "That was not a big surprise, but I knew it was going to be hard for me to have a lot more battles than in Europe. I just tried to figure it out and it's becoming better and better."

The amount of decision time that was available on the ice in comparison to the Swiss National League, where he plied his trade for 10 seasons with EHC Biel-Bienne and SC Bern, shrunk just like the size of the ice surface he would need to become accustomed to in his first NHL season.

"For sure the rink. The rink is smaller," Haas cited as his biggest roadblock when adapting to hockey in North America. "You don't have that much space, that much time, and everything happens pretty quick."

Haas conditioned himself to leave every practice and every game just a little bit better than before, knowing the transition wouldn't come easy and instead be built up over time.

"Just learning the game every day, and every day you get more confidence," he said. "I think it starts at practice. You play, have some games, and confidence is coming. Then you know how the game is going."

Now, with the extending of his stay in Edmonton for another season, Haas is prepared to build on that pledge to improve.

"At the end of the season, I think I played almost 60 games, so it's pretty positive for me," Haas, who's recorded five goals and five assists in 58 games during his debut season, said.

"For sure, I want to improve my game and try to help the team a little more in the offensive zone. But I think my game in the d-zone was pretty solid, so I can start with that and try to improve every day."