How COVID-19 upended the world’s oldest hockey player’s season
Ellert Vickstrom was already old by hockey standards - older than Joe Thornton is now - when his 6-year-old son, Timy, began to travel with him to away matchups in the lower ranks of the Swedish pro game. Ellert played left wing in Falun, his hometown and the site of a world-renowned medieval copper mine. His teammates were tight-knit, bonded by banter and the hands of poker they'd deal on the bus. Young Timy, impressionable and along for the ride, got hooked on team spirit and, in turn, on the sport.
This was late in the 1990s. Timy is now 28 years old. He leads a Falun-based semi-pro team in scoring, and occasionally his shifts overlap with those of his captain, a beloved elder statesman who nonetheless poses a threat to his cred.
"Sometimes, I've wanted to shout at Ellert. I've almost been shouting, 'Dad!'" Timy said. "And then (I think), oh, f---. I can't say that."
Such is life on the ice with the 64-year-old man who, as far as theScore can tell, is the oldest competitive hockey player on the planet. Safe to say he's the only Swede of his vintage with a hard wrist shot, abidingly good injury luck, and hope that the country's ongoing, pandemic-induced sports hiatus won't hasten the end of his career.
Ellert Vickstrom. Supplied by BK Ockra Ellert Vickstrom hasn't missed a season since 1962, the year he joined his first Falun youth team. It was the same year Chris Chelios, to cite a more recognizable but less prolific iron man, was born. Where Chelios, the Hall of Fame defenseman, hung up his skates a decade ago after 1,651 NHL games, Vickstrom doesn't plan to retire until April - from his longtime day job, that is, as a paint factory and lab technician.
His hockey future is less definite. The 2020-21 season is Vickstrom's 59th across all levels of the game, as well as his first playing alongside Timy for BK Ockra, the club he and his son helped found this year to compete in HockeyTrean, Sweden's fifth division. Leagues below the third tier have postponed play as Sweden combats a surge in coronavirus cases. That means Ellert and Timy are idling in Falun, having recently contracted and recovered from COVID-19 themselves.
"What to do?" Ellert said. "Just wait."
Barred from practicing, hoping that the schedule will resume in the new year, the disruption has at least freed time for Vickstrom to consider the fruits of his longevity. He's gotten to represent a dozen teams: Kniva IK, Falu HC, Halsinggardens AIK. He scored four goals in an outdoor game for fourth-tier Sundborn around 1990. ("Some years ago" is his best estimate on the timing.) He played three games for BK Ockra this October before he fell ill with fever, cough, a headache, and pain in his bones, which laid him low for a couple of weeks.
Ellert Vickstrom (25), 1988. Supplied by BK OckraPre-coronavirus, Vickstrom's health history was characterized by surprising fortune. The knocks he's suffered over six decades - broken ribs here, a puck to the nose there - all hurt but healed. That, sleeping well, and sticking to his home squat-and-bench-press regimen form the extent of his explanation for how he's still mobile. Vickstrom "doesn't go as fast as he used to," concedes BK Ockra forward Kalle Gunnarsson, a longtime teammate. "But he can still manage to get on the team for every match and be competitive."
"I don't think I've done anything special," Vickstrom told theScore in a recent Zoom interview, though he added one more word to the wise: "Get yourself good teammates. That's good advice."
Vickstrom's BK Ockra teammates are an eclectic bunch. They range in age from 16 (forwards Albin Eljas and Andrei Jansson) to 52 (reserve goalie Ulf Alexandersson), and they include a 38-year-old former KHL and Swedish Hockey League netminder, Daniel Sperrle, who once went six playoff games - 390 minutes and 12 seconds in all - without allowing a goal in the Russian second division.
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Gunnarsson, a fellow BK Ockra co-founder, teaches hockey and carpentry at a Falun high school. Other players work by day at hospitals, sell office supplies, and comprise three-fourths of Bolaget, a party-rock quartet with 450,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Bolaget's vocalist has moonlighted as the PA announcer at Ockra home games.
BK Ockra's top scorer, with 11 goals and five assists in four games, is Timy Vickstrom, who used to play as high as Sweden's third division. Tiring of the sport and wanting to prioritize his university business studies, Timy stepped away from competition in 2017, cementing a rare family dynamic: "I actually quit playing hockey before my dad." When Halsinggardens AIK, Ellert and Gunnarsson's old club in Falun, folded last year, a few players committed to launching their own HockeyTrean squad, and the younger Vickstrom was persuaded to mount a comeback.
Sweden's secondary pro rungs feature a promotion and relegation system reminiscent of English soccer. It's BK Ockra's ambition to move up from the fifth tier once the pandemic abates, the economy recovers, and fan interest and sponsorship dollars help stock the roster with more talent.
Falun is about 140 miles northwest of Stockholm. Google Maps Before the season stalled, the founders sought to drum up buzz in part by aligning with local lore. "Ockra" translates to ocher, the earthy pigment found at Falun Mine, a UNESCO heritage site that dates back a millennium. The team's logo is an ibex, the mountain goat that is said to have dug up the town's first copper extract.
The most distinctive story they have going for them is that of their captain. When BK Ockra welcomed Ellert Vickstrom to the lineup in a Facebook post this summer, replies in English and Swedish hailed him as a "legend," "Superman," and "The King." One fan suggested erecting a statue of him at the Falun sports complex. "Everybody you meet on the street, he's played with," Timy said in the Zoom interview. That Ellert is still going is a credit to his refusal to skimp on training, Timy added, tapping his dad's upper arm for effect.
"He's got some muscles," Timy said. "To be able to play at the level he still does, you have to have really good fitness. He's the golden example of it. If you keep up your preseason workouts, then you can do it. And, of course, you have to have talent. It's not amateur hockey we play. It's real senior hockey."
Though he didn't record a point in his three October appearances, Ellert took a regular shift as BK Ockra secured some convincing wins, including a 9-1 rout of lowly Kvarnsvedens GoIF. Late that month, a COVID-19 outbreak sickened the Vickstroms and five other players, forcing Ockra to shutter operations for two weeks as everyone recovered. Ockra returned to practice in mid-November just as public health authorities instituted sweeping restrictions, pausing the planned 16-game season before any team in the region got even halfway there.
Ellert (left) and Timy Vickstrom, on different teams in 2016. Supplied by BK OckraWhether or not the schedule can be salvaged, Timy figures this'll be his last season; he intends to enter the workforce once he graduates next summer, and he wants to focus on guiding BK Ockra off the ice as club chairman. Ellert has yet to decide if he'll be back next year for a 60th go-around. Retiring from work and play would free him up to winter in the Philippines, where he has a house, and fulfill a longstanding wish to live abroad for a time.
"In one way, I want him to quit, and in one way I don't. There's pretty tough, big guys in the league, and I don't want him to get hurt. At this age, it feels unnecessary," Timy said. "But at the same time, we all think it's amazing that he plays."
Exiting the game together would feel complete to the Vickstroms, closing a circle that opened with those lively bus trips out of Falun. By hanging on this long, Ellert has already cinched worldwide distinction. More than 800,000 men's and women's players have their stats logged on the hockey website Elite Prospects. Seven active players were born in the 1950s, per the site's database, and he's the oldest to have dressed in games this season.
By enduring in obscure leagues around Europe, these players - Maria Senkowsky, 63, in Austria's second women's division; Josef Cechura and Jaroslav Prantner, 64 and 62, teammates in the Czech eighth tier - represent a rare breed of old-timer. The competition is far less skilled, yet they're encroaching nevertheless on Gordie Howe territory, "Mr. Hockey" having laced them up at age 69 to play a single game for the minor-league Detroit Vipers.
It so happens that Ellert Vickstrom was once part of an inline hockey team named after Howe. The late Red Wings icon is his idol, the reason Vickstrom ditched his customary No. 25 this season to sport jersey No. 9. He admired Howe's staying power, plus his swagger and edge, qualities that are ascertainable in old YouTube clips. He never actually got to watch Howe live.
"It was a little bit before my time," Vickstrom said, smiling.
Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.
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