(WGR 550) – Rasmus Dahlin begins the continuation of his Olympic dream on Wednesday as Sweden faces Italy. After Dahlin was drafted first overall in 2018 by the Buffalo Sabres, he went to the Winter Olympics at age 18 and played two games picking up one assist. Before he left for Italy I had a chance to talk to Dahlin and Tage Thompson about what’s ahead. Dahlin said he was too young and probably shouldn’t have gone to his first Olympics,

“I feel like I was a little too young, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have, so now I know what the Olympics actually mean and I’m going to enjoy it way more and take advantage of the situation.”

To European players, the Olympics are the ultimate to them and their countries. Dahlin said it’s the same in Sweden,

“Yes, growing up I didn’t watch NHL very much, I watched more SHL and then Olympics was the big thing and coming from Sweden, it’s probably the biggest thing you can win.”

As a kid watching the Olympics Dahlin remembered Peter Forsberg,

“As a kid you heard about ’94 when Peter Forsberg did that move and then ’06 obviously (Sweden won Gold), and then you have ’14 I think when they came in second, so it’s a lot of great memories from the Olympics.”

As far as Dahlin’s idols from those teams he said,

“Young, young it was Peter Forsberg, and my favorite number was 21, and then once I got older I started to look at D-men like (Erik) Karlsson, (Victor) Hedman and (Oliver) Ekman-Larsson, so it’s awesome to play with those guys now.”

Dahlin has played with Hedman and Karlsson with the National Team and he said he’s always learning from them,

“Yes, it’s very unique just sitting in the locker-room, practice days, game routines, I’m picking up everything and learning so much from everybody and then you have conversations with guys, so for me it’s just a time to grow.”

Arguably the best defenseman in NHL history is Nicklas Lidstrom. He won four Stanley Cups and seven Norris Trophies with the Detroit Red Wings in a career that spanned 1,564 games which is 14th overall in NHL history. Lidstrom is 55-years-old, but Dahlin has had an opportunity to take the ice with him and learn,

“When I was 19, I tried texting him and I asked if he was up to answering some questions, so I drove up to him and just had a list of 100 questions and we sat down for a couple of hours and then when we were done, I had booked some ice, so we hopped on the ice and he taught me how to defend a 2-on-1 and a lot of things and I still use his tips.”

Tage Thompson will be playing in his first Olympics starting on Thursday when Team USA faces off against Latvia. Thompson won a Gold Medal for the United States at the most recent World Championship when he scored the Golden Goal in overtime.

Even before the break started, Thompson said the honor of playing in the Olympics for Team USA had started to set in,

“Yes, big time, it’s coming up quick so there’s no time to prepare, you just jump into it which is good.”

It of course was great for Thompson to win Gold at Worlds, but the Olympic games are a whole different ball game,

“It’s the biggest stage, it’s against all the best players in the world, so everything is a bit elevated and that just makes it more exciting.”

Thompson wasn’t alive in 1980 when Herb Brooks took his team of college players to Gold. Thompson said he knows all about it,

“Watching ‘Miracle’ That’s a classic if you’re an American watching that growing up and when I was younger, watching T.J. Oshie in the Olympics in the shootout and it was something that stuck out to me.”

Thompson has had a couple of practices with Team USA playing right wing with Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin at center. He said he will do whatever is asked of him,

“I think it’s just being accepting of whatever is given to you and doing it to the best of your ability to help your team.”

This is the first time since 2014 that NHL players are in the Olympics and Thompson is so happy that they are,

“Being an NHL player I’m pretty excited that we’re back, it means I get to have an opportunity to play and for sure a lot of other guys feel the same way and it’s the best in the world going up against each other, and the intensity is going to be as high as you can imagine.”

Don’t forget it’s not all the best players in the world with Russia banned from the Olympics due to their invasion of Ukraine.

That means you will not see Alex Ovechkin, Nikita Kucherov, Kirill Kaprizov, Artemi Panarin, Evgeni Malkin, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Ilya Sorokin or Sergei Bobrovsky. Igor Shesterkin would’ve been out anyway with an injury.