Hedstrom talks about his time in Anaheim

Remember Jonathan Hedstrom? The Swedish winger who played four games with Anaheim in the NHL in 2002/2003 and 79 games in 2005/2006. At the end of the 2005/2006 season he went back to Sweden due to personal issues. In a recent interview with the Swedish website hockeykanalen.se (which was aired on the site's web-TV channel) Hedstrom among many other things talked about his time in Anaheim and what really happened.

On how his eating disorders started:

"We measured our weight every Monday in Anaheim and one time I was 2.2 lbs too heavy and my punishment was that I had to do laps in front of the other guys. At that point I got sulky, which worked out well in terms of my game but other things got unfortunate."

On if it stings that he missed winning the Stanley Cup as he went home:

"Yes it does of course. I played with Pahlsson and Niedermayer there and we had a good chekingline and I got a lot of icetime. I think I recieved about 18 minutes of icetime per game. Of course it's hard, but it's really not somehing I'm thinking about now."

On how much weight he lost:

"When I came to the Olympics that year I was at only 169.4 lbs. I had lost about 22 pounds in just a couple of months and obviously wasn't healthy. Now I'm back at 189.2 lbs so my body feels good. Sure, sometimes I still have problems eating, but it's not something that disturbs me in my everyday life."

Hedstrom is having a tough year with Lulea of the Swedish Elite League as he has 14 assists along with only 1 goal in 41 games thus far. And speaking of Lulea, Hedstrom is teammate with Mattias Modig. The Ducks goaltender prospect lost the starting job to Islanders prospect Anders Nilsson early in the season but is now back as the number one.

And on the question who he rather has behind him as the team is fighting to keep their play off spot for the remaining games of the regular season, Hedstrom had this to say:

"Modig has been playing really good lately. I think it was him who stepped up last year as well. Nilsson has played only one game since returning from the WJHC's I think. He's training really hard and if he gets the chance I think he will succeed. But at this point I'm going with Modig."

The interview in Swedish is here.