An Interview with Felix Unger Sorum

Expectations, Swedish Candy, and EA Sports FC

By Nick Bass

Going to preface this one with right before we started this interview, Bradly Nadeau was very proud and prominent in trying to get the guys to play pickleball. Right before I hit record, he goes “Ask him about the match we played yesterday, put that in your interview.” I obliged, so that’s where the first question comes from. “N” stands for myself and “F” stands for Felix.

N: “Just because he asked it, you played pickleball for the first time with Bradly [Nadeau] and he says he beat you, is that true?”
F: “Yeah. He’s probably played whole summer, every day for one or two hours. But [that was my] first time.”

N: “Seems unfair”
F: “Few more times and I beat him”

N: “What area of your game would you say you worked on the hardest this summer?”
F: “Just getting stronger. Try to gain more weight. Try to be more ready to get here and I know it’s smaller ice with more board battles, so to try and prepare for that.”

N: “You played a lot of wing and now you are being asked to play center, does it feel natural playing center now even though you haven’t played there in a while?”
F: “Wouldn’t say it’s natural, just trying to get used to it and use the practices to try and see how it is but I don’t mind it. It’s not that big of a difference here, like you get the puck a little bit more in the middle than on the boards. I’ll learn with time but it’s a lot of fun.”

N: “If I was to ask your family members, how many hours a day did you practice your game when you were a kid?”
F: “Wow. No idea. You know, with roller skates we played a lot of that when I was a kid in the summer. Some long hours since they had a pretty good rink near where I lived in Sweden so it was a lot of hours there. I love being on the ice, as a kid I didn’t want to go off the ice, always looked forward to practice and in the summer was a lot of inline.”

N: “Has anyone from the NHL team pulled you aside and given you advice?”
F: “No, nothing special. Just go here and try to play your game. Just take it day by day and see what happens but I’m really excited for it.”

N: “That was going to lead into my next question, so what are your expectations for your first year of North American hockey?”
F: “No expectations. Just try to go here and get more experience and try to play my game and see where it takes me. Don’t have any special expectations, I’m just really excited to get going.”

N: “So that’s all the hard ones out of the way, let’s get into some fun ones. Who was your favorite player growing up?”
F: “Filip Forsberg [is] from my town in Sweden, so him.”

N: “What’s your favorite sport outside of hockey? Just learned it’s not pickleball.”
F: “It’s football.”

N: “That’s European football?”
F: “Yeah.” [we had talked about the new EA Sports FC game that just came out]

N: “You said you’ve been playing the new one?” [EAFC 25]
F: “Yeah exactly. Came out two days ago. I haven’t had time to play a lot yet but me and [Noel] Gunler bought an extra screen so we can play at the same time in our room.”

N: “What is your favorite musical artist/genre?”
F: “Wow. I actually have no idea who is my favorite artist but I listen to most music though like everything. I like Swedish music, English music, pop, rock, I listen to most of it. You get pretty used to it when you are in a hockey locker room since it can be anything.” This was particularly funny because in the background of the voice recording you can here Ruslan Khazheyev having a blast with the aux cord and gigantic RGB speaker. Pretty solid music choices to be fair to him. Specifically, a club remix of Jennifer Lopez’s “On the floor” featuring Pitbull.

N: “Last one, so you are on a long road trip, what is your go to gas station order?”
F: “Probably a soda. And it’s a Swedish kind, it’s called “Gifflar”, it’s a cinnamon balls or rolls in a small bag.”

N: “Any soda in particular?”
F: “I like Coca-Cola. Some other Swedish ones too but it is just like Coke.”

N: “I know you haven’t been here that long but have you seen the Oreo and Coke collab? They made an Oreo flavored Coke and Coke flavored Oreos?”
F: “I haven’t seen it but now I’m definitely going to try it. I usually buy that too on the way home, Oreos. I love Oreos. So one of those two (Gifflar being the other) on a road trip.”