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Photo by Andreas Planck/Pic Agency / hockeyallsvenskan.se / PNG

“But even in November and December he was saying he wasn’t there yet, he didn’t feel himself,” Johnson said. “For a kid that took a gut shot to his confidence, we wanted to be really careful how we handled the rest of his season. We wanted to be sure not to throw too much at him.”

In January, Johnson, among others, advised him to take all of the other options off the table and stay with Timra.

“I could tell it was a huge weight off his shoulders, when he could finally say he wasn’t going anywhere else and he could focus,” Johnson said. “I told him, ‘Be the best Jonathan Dahlen you can be. Go accomplish what you want to accomplish there, do something special with that organization.'”

Dahlen did just that. He helped lead his Timra club to promotion to Sweden’s top league.

“That’s when he started to feel himself again. He wanted to win the league (title) and win the opportunity to go up to the elite league and he did it,” Johnson said. “He put his team on his back and it was a huge accomplishment. For a young player like that to face the adversity and everything he faced in one year, to me from a development side of things, will fast-forward him.

“You’ll always face adversity, but to do it at such a young age and come out the other end of it with the great experience he had, to me that’s like five years’ experience packed into one season.”

On paper, when you compare this past season for Dahlen with his 2016-17 year, it won’t come off as impressive. For the same team, he ended up with the same number of points.