The other players on the ice are taunting me with cries of “Chicken Swede this and Chicken Swede that.”

That’s OK. Like Börje Salming, I can take it. I’m honored by the comparison, even if I do make it myself.

I don’t care if someone else wants me to smash my ideas into people’s heads with my fists like Tiger Williams. You can fake your way to a lot of short term success, but if you want to endure, you have to learn to be true to yourself. Like Salming, I will play this game my way, with my own style, on my own terms, and with my own definition of success.

Back in the late 80’s, during the peak of the graffiti fad, I lived in Stockholm. Like most big cities in those days, graffiti was everywhere. The most common graffiti you’d see spray painted around town were two words: “Salming lever”.

Salming lives.