Rasmus Sandin is less than a month removed from the final game of a whirlwind of a season. The 23-year-old blueliner started the year in Toronto with a playoff-bound Maple Leafs team and ended it with the lottery-bound Washington Capitals.
It was a huge personal transition both on the ice and off of it for a young player that was a first-round draft selection fewer than five years ago. A transition that Sandin says was tremendously helped by Swedish countryman Nicklas Backstrom.
Sandin, who is with Team Sweden in preparation for this year’s World Championships, sat down with Aftonbladet’s Jonathan Nilsson earlier this week to talk about it.
“He has helped me incredibly, right from the first day when I came in late at night and when I got to meet all the players the next day in the morning,” Sandin said as translated by Google Translate. “When I would go down to breakfast, he himself sits outside and waits for people to come down and introduce all the players and managers and everything like that. He has been incredibly helpful. I appreciate it incredibly much. Everyone knows what kind of hockey player he is, but as a person he is even greater, I think.”
Sandin attributes Backstrom acting as his personal icebreaker in the locker room and the fact that he kicked his Capitals career off with 12 points in his first nine games as why he seemed to gel so quickly with his new teammates.
That was evidenced on-ice by that historic production in those first several games and off the ice as it took him just five games to pick up on some of the unique quirks around the team like “Red” being shouted during the national anthem at Capital One Arena.
“It’s easy to hang out, not just with [Backstrom],” Sandin said. “Thanks to him, you get to socialize with many others. It makes everything much easier. You feel safe quite quickly. Then of course it helps that it went quite well at the start as well. Then the move will be easier.
“I was shocked when everything happened,” he continued. “But once I got there, it went very well and then the move will be a little easier too. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s been a rekindling. It has been incredibly fun.”
Sandin, like a lot of young players in the league right now, grew up watching some of the superstars that he now shares a locker room with on the Caps. He commented on getting to share the ice with Backstrom and legendary Caps captain Alex Ovechkin.
“It’s awesome,” Sandin stated. “There are two players you look up to when you were younger and I still do. The first day when you get there and Bäckis and Ovechkin are sitting in there next to you, it was really cool. To get the chance to play with them, I’ll take that any day of the week.
Sandin finished his first season with the Caps, racking up 15 points (3g, 12a) in 19 games. He skated 22:59 of ice time per game which ranked second overall on the team behind only John Carlson (23:23).
That sort of big role is expected to continue for him next season as he’s penciled in for both top-four duties at even strength and he also should see an undetermined amount of power play time depending on what sort of system is brought to the team by its new head coach.
Caps general manager Brian MacLellan did comment during his Breakdown Day media availability that the team’s defense corps could be tweaked further this offseason although that is unlikely to affect Sandin personally.
“I think we could still improve [the defense] a little bit,” MacLellan said. “We’ll look at opportunities to do that. I like the right side, what they contributed. They all have roles they fill within our team and all do it well. The left side we have three 23-year-old guys that all look to improve and get better and get to the next level. I think it’s a pretty well-rounded group.
“I think depending on cap decisions,” he added. “To me, our main work will be in our top six forwards and then based on that we’ll see what we can do on the backend.”
The Caps did sign depth defender Hardy Häman Aktell to a one-year, two-way entry-level contract in late April. Häman Aktell is getting acquainted with his potential Caps teammate in Sandin right now as both are with Team Sweden.
Headline photo: Katie Adler/RMNB
