Fabian Zetterlund says there’s no sense in sulking through tough stretches.
As such, you can usually find the winger in the Senators’ locker room smiling or cracking a joke, sometimes to the amusement of his teammates as they simultaneously try to field questions from the media.
Even in the midst of one of the most frustrating stretches of his career earlier this season — Zetterlund scored just once in his first 20 games — the Swede never wavered from his outlook on life.
Now, with five goals in his last eight games, he’s seeing rewards on the stat sheet for keeping his head up. Zetterlund says he’s trying to rub that positivity off on a room that has lost five of their last six games heading into a three-game road trip.
“Just bring a smile, bring positivity every day, you want to be happy,” said Zetterlund. “If you walk around with your head down, like, it’s not going to change anything. You need to be focused, be on your toes, act like normal. Want to get better and stick with that, everything else will come. We believe in this group, it’s a great group.”
It’s an approach that has been tested throughout Zetterlund’s career. Back in San Jose, in the midst of a rebuild, he said arriving every day with that same positivity was hard sometimes.
“But you’ve just got to do it, you know,” says Zetterlund. “Because if everyone else is seeing you happy, it gets to another guy, and another guy. It’s something I always want to bring.”
That belief in spreading a bit of cheer extended beyond the dressing room this week. On Monday, Zetterlund visited CHEO for the first time as a Senator, part of the team’s annual holiday visit to spread happiness to sick children. That visit meant a lot to the 26-year-old.
Zetterlund’s 11-year-old cousin, who lives with Down syndrome, went through a battle with cancer last year. “I know exactly how it is for his parents, what they go through, what they do for him every day,” said Zetterlund.
“[Monday] meant a lot to me, it was tough a few times when I went into some rooms, because I got flashbacks to my cousin. You don’t really know what to say too, to the parents, but I always want to be there to help them if I have the chance.”
Zetterlund says the smiles the team got from the children made the visit well worth it. “Just so nice to be there and to see how happy all of them are when they see us,” said Zetterlund.
“Not just the kids, also the moms and dads sometimes too. Because they go through a lot, their whole family. They’re fighting harder than us, so what we can give them means everything.
