A few late-night thoughts: The Flyers showed some signs of life against the Penguins in what turned out to be a competitive and entertaining (primarily in an intense third period) game at the Wachovia Center. Despite the 3-2 shootout loss, the team at least has some things it can build off heading into games against the Rangers and Panthers.
I like Peter Laviolette's move to give Dan Carcillo time on the power play. So far, it's worked out pretty well. Carcillo scored the lone Philly goal in Tuesday's 6-1 debacle and he made Claude Giroux's power play goal possible in this game.
As far as the shootout finale goes, I detest shootouts regardless of the outcome. I never had a problem with a tie game, and I find the 4-on-4 overtimes (which also featured some rare 3-on-3 play last night) to be more satisfying than the shootout. Unfortunately, shootouts render OT basically pointless since they count the same in the standings anyway.
***
You can order
Pelle Lindbergh: Behind the White Mask online at
Barnes & Noble, via
Amazon or through
Middle Atlantic Press.
Here's an excerpt from Chapter 14 of the book. In the final version of the manuscript, this section got significantly cut down for space, but I found the recollections of Lindbergh's "movie career" in Sweden to be funny.
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Pelle discovered quickly during the 1980-81 season just how expensive it is to constantly call and send mail back and forth from the USA to Sweden. Try as he might, he can’t keep in touch with everyone.
One of the first people he catches up with when he returns home for the summer of 1981 is Swedish movie director Jan Halldoff. Two years earlier, Halldoff and Lindbergh met at a Stockholm restaurant called “Kvarnen” (“The Mill”). The two hit it off quickly. Halldoff discovered the national team goaltender was a real movie buff.
Apart from directing movies, Halldoff was also a screenplay writer. Most recently, he’d been inspired to write a script about prostitution. An acquaintance’s former girlfriend had fallen in with a bad crowd and ended up becoming a prostitute. He based a film around it, entitled Lämna Inte Mig Ensam (Don’t Leave Me Alone).
“Pelle, I’m a directing a movie and I think you have the perfect personality to play one of the main roles,” Halldoff said.
That’s all Pelle needed to hear. He immediately arranged to do a test reading for the part of Magnus, a kid from the south side of Stockholm with a promising future in boxing, a girlfriend and a love for motorcycles. The test reading was done in an apartment on Enskedsvägen. Halldoff had Pelle walk, talk, laugh on cue, and pretend to get angry. He got the part.
In the spring of 1979, after returning from the World Championships, Pelle filmed his scenes for the movie. One on of the first days, he stood outside on seedy Malmskillnadgatan as the director bribed the (real) prostitutes on the street to go away for a little while so Pelle could shoot a scene with professional actresses portraying hookers.
If that weren’t surreal enough, the real-life prostitutes were upset about being asked to move. Thinking quickly, Halldoff came up with an alternative to giving them money to go away.
“We disturbed the surroundings with our film team, and the prostitutes couldn’t work the streets. So we gave them sandwiches to occupy them until we were done. Pelle took it all in stride, and did a good job,” Halldoff recalls.
To prepare for the role, Pelle took some boxing lessons with the BK Narva boxing club. His excellent balance and lower body power made him effective in sparring sessions despite his lack of height and reach.
“Pelle had a damn good time with two scenes in the movie,” Björn Neckman recalls. “One was a boxing scene. They had worked out choreography, where Pelle would hit the other guy with a left and then a right, and so on. But Pelle didn’t stick to the choreography. He wanted to show off what he’d learned, and he improvised. He ended up tagging the other guy for real. They had to pay the other guy extra.
“The other scene was a love scene, where Pelle had to lie down on a bed and pretend to make love with his girlfriend in the movie. It was actually a little tough, because the people behind the camera had a choreographed script to follow even for this type of scene.”
Pelle wrapped up his scenes fairly quickly and posed from some publicity stills for the movie. The film was released the following year, premiering in Stockholm on March 7, 1980, shortly after Pelle got back from the Olympics in Lake Placid.
The movie earned lukewarm reviews and a modest haul at the box office (even by Swedish film standards). Pelle was neither shocked nor disappointed.
“He thought the movie turned out so-so,” Neckman recalls. “But he had fun.”
Lindbergh and director/writer Halldoff remain friendly long after filming the movie. They get together in the summer of 1981, and every summer to follow.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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