SJIceHockey.com Player Profile

Sebastian Sundberg is like many of the young male teenagers you might meet today. He likes sports, plays video games, plays practical jokes and enjoys steak and hamburgers, but the one difference is Sebastian is from a small town in Sweden called Sigtuna. Population is only 7,000 and is located in the center of Sweden. Sebastian is a junior at Shawnee High School and stars on defense for the first place ice hockey team. He is here in the United States as part of an exchange program and is staying with the Evoy family, whose son Alex is also a defenseman on Shawnee. Sebastian feels the transition has been pretty smooth; he still follows his favorite NHL player, Niklas Kronwall, plays on-line poker and lists Phil Ivey as his favorite poker player.

Just like his idol defensemen from the Detroit Red Wings, Sebastian has demonstrated his ability of scoring goals with his smooth-skating style. He has scored twice in a couple of games. Earlier in the season against Washington Township, he scored on an assist from Matt McDonald to put Shawnee ahead 4-0 at the start of the second period. Sebastian found the back of the net during the third period of that game. His second two goal game was two games later against Holy Cross. Against the Lancers, his power play goal during the first period helped his team build a 3-0 lead. He would score again during the second period on assists from Brian Ruskowski and Joe Pezzato.

Sebastian has hopes of becoming a professional poker player some day, but first he would like to pursue hockey, after finishing his senior year in 2009. He hopes to either attend a college in Canada or the US, or play on one of the elite junior teams in Europe. His music taste he says is soft rock. When we pressed him about the most popular singing group from Sweden, Abba, he confessed that while he has heard some of their songs, his father is more of a fan than he, although one of his coaches swears he has heard him humming Dancing Queen during warm-ups.

When not playing hockey, Mrs. Evoy said he’s just like any other kid and gets along well with all four of her children. As with most hockey players, Sebastian also excels at golf, sporting a 5 handicap, and admires fellow countryman, Jesper Parnevik. We spoke about 30 minutes prior to Shawnee’s rematch with Cherokee, the only team to defeat Shawnee this season and Sebastian was anxious to not only help his team defeat Cherokee but promised he would score a goal as well. He succeeded on both counts. With that kind of confidence, Sebastian should do just fine with dreams and goals for the future.