It's been a quiet few weeks for 2023 Detroit Red Wings first round draft pick Axel Sandin Pellikka.  Since the whirlwind of the draft and then development camp, the 18-year-old has enjoyed a low-key summer back home in Sweden.

"I've just been home in my hometown [Gällivare, Sweden] and just hanging out with my family," Sandin Pellikka tells The Hockey News after his first practice of the World Junior Summer Showcase.  "[I've] practiced some off ice and just go relax—go fishing and golfing and doing some fun stuff."

It hasn't been a full break from hockey, but work at the rink hasn't come at the expense of some hard-earned leisure: "We had some ice time back home, so I've been on the ice at least over 10 hours.  I still had a lot of time to go fishing and all those kinds of stuff.  So it's been fun."

Gällivare is a town of 8,500 in Lapland, about a thousand miles north of Gothenburg, where Sandin Pellikka will look to help propel the Swedes to their first World Junior gold medal since 2012 when the tournament rolls around in December.  In July though, there's ample time to allow the mind to wander from a gold medal and focus on enjoying some time at the lake.  

"Now, it's mostly just pike, just because it's fun to get a big one on the hook and they're easy to catch too," Sandin Pellikka says when asked what kind of fishing he's been up to.  Unfortunately, his final venture before traveling back to Michigan came to an unpleasant ending: "I actually got a hook in my finger, so just like stuck all the way in, and I had to go to the hospital."

"It was a stinger," he explains.  "So you have one hook here [gesturing to an imaginary fishing lure], and it's like a thread, and then there's another hook.  So one hook was sitting in the pike's mouth, and I was trying to get it out, but the pike shook away and the hook got stuck in my finger while the other one was still stuck in the pike's mouth and it was trying to swim away.  I was just holding with my fingers so I got stuck pretty bad, and I was about to faint because I got so shocked."

However, it never got to the point where Sandin Pellikka had to contemplate too seriously the thought of having to call Steve Yzerman and explain that the Red Wings' latest first round pick had come down with a fishing injury; instead, he escaped with nothing more than a small scar. The wound never even rose to the level of parental concern.  "Nothing dangerous," Sandin Pellikka says with a smile.  "My father was with me, and he was just standing there laughing at me a little bit."

Still grinning, he adds that "the hospital where I live—they're pretty used to having to remove fish hooks, because there's a lot of guys that go fishing there."  He got the wound taken care off, and it did nothing to detract from his summer training.

The fishing injury firmly in the rear view mirror, Sandin Pellikka can now turn his focus to the World Junior, first in the form of the week-long Summer Showcase and in a few months time with the actual tournament.

While gold in Gothenburg represents the latest target for him to pursue, Sandin Pellikka is no stranger to representing his country on an international stage.  "I played with the national team now—this is my third season from U-17 to U-18 to U-20," he explains.  "We always have the same playing system, so I'm pretty used to it, and all of the guys are used to it too.  Of course, the first practices are a little off, but you'll get there eventually."

He says that his experience at the 2023 World Junior in the Maritimes (at which Sweden finished fourth, falling to Czechia in overtime in the medal round and to the U.S. in the bronze medal game) "is not that much on my mind."  

"I mean I'm just gonna go out there and play my game and help the team as much as I can, so just play my game and just be relaxed," he continues.  

You get that the sense that this isn't a rejection of a leadership role so much as a reflection of Sandin Pellikka's relaxed demeanor; absent a fishing lure sunk into his fingers, it's hard to picture him as anything but at ease—a feeling that pervades into watching him on the ice, where he operates with grace and on his own schedule whenever the puck comes on his tape.

When he looks around the Swedish dressing room, he takes confidence in what he sees, and he isn't worried about his country's recent struggles with the knockout rounds of this tournament.  "We're just focused on this year and this team," he says.  "The goal is to win the World Juniors in the end, and we have a great team this season.  The '04s won gold at the U-18 tournament, and we were very close to getting gold with the '05s, and that's our goal."

The prospect of hosting the tournament further excites Sandin-Pellikka, and with more than a little humility regarding a roster spot that is not even a shadow of doubt doubt, he says  "It's going to be a good experience if I make the team, and that's my goal."