Glen Metropolit's Player Profile:
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=21572
This is in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper:
Metropolit living good life in Switzerland
By Dave Stubbs, The Gazette
October 10, 2012
MONTREAL — There’s probably only one part of Glen Metropolit’s culinary life in Switzerland that’s less than five-star right now.
“I’ve been cooking for myself over here and that kinda stinks,” the gap-toothed, forever-grinning Metro joked from Lugano, where he’s enjoying a fine season in the Swiss A League.
“But my wife knows a lot about nutrition and she tells me what I can and can’t eat. That’s what gotten me to this stage, so I can compete on this big ice.”
It’s inconceivable that anyone in hockey, on either side of the Atlantic, is unhappy for Metro, whose 110 regular-season and playoff games with the Canadiens from 2008-10 brought down the curtain on his 437-game NHL career.
The 38-year-old hockey nomad is tied for second in Swiss league scoring with a goal and 11 assists in 11 games, Lugano tied for second in the league.
Playing arguably the best hockey of his career, Metro seems to have discovered the fountain of youth in Switzerland. And if it’s in a solid-bar form, in the magnificent tablets of Swiss chocolate he says are a guilty pleasure, he’s not admitting it.
“Everything in moderation, right?!” he said, laughing again.
Metropolit had a wonderful night Tuesday in HC Lugano’s 7-3 home-ice win over SCL Tigers, his four assists giving him the only four-point pro-career game he could recollect.
One linemate, the freshly arrived, quasi-jet-lagged Boston Bruins winger Patrice Bergeron, had two goals and two assists; on the other wing, Swiss native Sebastien Reuille had a pair of helpers.
“Compliments to Berg for coming in to help me out,” Metro said. “Our league’s gotten a lot better the last couple of weeks.”
Indeed, the NHL lockout has sent 18 players from North American teams to the elite Swiss circuit, with more surely to come. Among them are Canadiens defencemen Raphael Diaz, with EV Zug, and Yannick Weber, with Geneva-Servette; and forward Max Pacioretty, with Ambrì Piotta.
For the well-travelled Metropolit, playing on his 16th professional team, this is a reunion of sorts with Bergeron. It was the horrific concussion suffered by the Bruins forward five years ago this month that rekindled Metro’s NHL career, having begun in 1999 with the Washington Capitals.
“I was with Berg when he got hurt and that kind of gave me my shot,” Metro said. “When he suffered his concussion, I sort of got his minutes, so that jump-started my second NHL career.”
The Toronto-native centreman had bounced from Washington to Tampa and back to the Capitals from 1999-2003.
But it was two productive seasons in Finland, with Jokerit Helsinki, that put Metro on the road to better NHL work. He won a Finnish league championship and MVP crown, his second year there coinciding with the NHL’s most recent lockout.
On to Switzerland’s Lugano he went in 2005-06 for his first tour of duty with that club, scoring 24 goals and assisting on 39 in 44 games, before suiting up for Canada at the world championship.
And then Metro made his way back across the pond, for four years playing for Atlanta, St. Louis, Boston, Philadelphia and finally the Canadiens.
An unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010, Switzerland’s EV Zug offered him a season plus an option with plenty of perks for himself, his wife, Michlyn, and their three young children.
The Metropolits jumped for the worldly experience, Michlyn at the time estimating she had moved a growing family more than 60 times during her husband’s career.
Then came the two-year offer this season from Lugano, which Metro says is referred to by the athletes as “Players’ Paradise.”
“I’ve been blessed,” he said of the city, which sits not far from the Italian border. “It’s a great situation, a beautiful city right on the water with great restaurants. The Italian people are so outgoing.
“There’s a real soccer mentality. These people are so fanatical and passionate about their sports. You come to a game here and they’re throwing smoke-bombs on the ice,” Metro said, laughing again. “It’s pretty wild. They have the finger gestures going, waving their hands. I thought I’d seen it all in my hockey days, but it’s pretty cool.”
The family decided not to uproot to Switzerland this season, having spent the past two years there, so Michlyn is home in Florida with children aged 10, 8 and 6, settling them into school. There are frequent visits both ways, and rest assured this is a clan that can circumnavigate the globe with less effort than we need to get around town.
Where Metropolit was a healthy scratch a few times with Zug because of import quotas, it’s unlikely he’ll find himself in the press box this season. Metro is centring Lugano’s first line, playing 18 to 20 minutes per night and getting first-wave power-play and penalty-kill duty.
He said that Bergeron arrived feeling “a little bad” about the roster-bumping the Bruin might create, but most everyone — bumper and bumpee alike — agrees that hockey is a free-market, supply-and-demand business, and that Europeans heading to the NHL have for years seized jobs in North America.
The lockout, Metro said, is a puzzling thing as viewed from Switzerland.
“These guys can’t just sit in a room with water and bread, and knock it out?” he wondered about the owners and players. “They can’t sacrifice another season, can they? I feel sorry for those around the game whose livelihoods are hurt by hockey not being played.”
Metro still cherishes his final NHL run in Montreal, especially the three-round playoffs of 2010.
“I still think about those days and keep reminiscing,” he said. “The guys here probably get tired of me talking about it, but I tell them: ‘Until you’ve lived it, you wouldn’t believe it.’ ”
Metro pauses as his car darts into a Swiss tunnel, his cell crackling as he does, and he’s speaking brightly as it emerges at the other end.
“I wish all the best for the (Canadiens) guys,” he said. “But where I am now? This is a good place to be.”
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