As he moved from place to place, through 10 or 15 houses, Anton Stralman became very good at packing up his life. He learned the best boxes to use, the best tape, how to organize and label everything in a family notebook: kitchen, bathroom, kid stuff, books, an inventory of their possessions. He and his wife Johanna learned how to build new social circles, to make new friends. The 28-year-old Swede is a rich man, but he likes to fill the boxes himself. As Stralman puts it, “I don’t feel comfortable when a bunch of guys come in and pack all my s--- up.”

Stralman is the No. 2 defenceman for the Tampa Bay Lightning, and he likes taking responsibility for that. Tampa will play his former team, the New York Rangers, in the Eastern Conference final beginning Saturday; Stralman is just one of the crossover stories, along with Martin St. Louis and Ryan Callahan.

He may be the most important one, though. The Lightning will need to play with structure and cohesion, and Stralman’s hockey intelligence is a big part of that. In terms of shots attempted for and against while he is on the ice, Stralman makes Victor Hedman better, by a lot — Tampa got 59.7 per cent of available shot attempts with them on the ice together at even strength this year, and Hedman was at 49.1 per cent without him. He makes Steven Stamkos better, by a lot — 58 per cent together, 50.7 pe rcent for Stamkos apart.

Stralman makes everybody he plays with better. He didn’t, always.

“I’ve used this line about Anton — he may not win the Norris Trophy, but his partner will,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper on the eve of the series. “That’s how good he can make you look. People should just watch him. He’s always on the right side of the puck. He uses his body in such a way that he doesn’t have to play a big heavy game, but he can play it because his body position is literally perfect every time he’s around the puck.

“He’s also got nerves of steel. So when he does have the puck and everything’s going so fast around him, for him, everything slows down for him. It’s funny because you think about players and they go into the corner to get a puck. And you think is he going to come out with this? But every time Stralman goes into the corner to get one, I’m confident that he’s going to come out with it. It’s such a calming presence for everybody when he’s on the ice out there.

“But to me, if you lined all the defencemen up in the league, you’d be hard-pressed not to pull him in if you got to big five. I’d be hard-pressed not to take on Anton Stralman.”

Stralman arrived in Toronto from Sweden at 21, with Johanna and a three-month-old baby. New country, new culture, a fierce spotlight. It was so much.

“It was hard, definitely,” said the soft-spoken Stralman in a lengthy conversation, earlier in the playoffs. “At the time you know, new baby, you don’t know what the f--- to do. And unfortunately, I was so focused on making it, hockey-wise, that my wife had to carry a huge amount of that load. And you know how emotional new mothers are. It’s hard. You don’t know what you’re doing, you need to learn, and the only way to do that is to be there.

“You need, really, all the time in the world to spend with the first one to get into it, and she was alone. You know, I didn’t help out much, I can be honest with that. It was a really tough situation.”

At work, he knew he didn’t fit what Brian Burke and Ron Wilson wanted — “they wanted to get bigger and stronger, and I was not going to go that” — and Wilson’s lack of support wore his confidence away. The Leafs traded him to Calgary for Wayne Primeau and a second-round pick. Stralman thinks that’s the biggest problem in Toronto. “Patience,” he says simply.

In Columbus, Ken Hitchcock told Stralman to be an offensive defenceman, move forward, go, and it felt good. Except he kept getting sick. The straw-haired Swede has had asthma since he was a child, but he contracted bronchitis five times in his second summer in Columbus. He went to doctor after doctor, sat in waiting rooms. It wasn’t until he signed in New York that the Rangers found a doctor who diagnosed Stralman with bronchiectasis — scarring in his lungs that held mucus, and generated infection.

“I take a treatment for cystic fibrosis, which I don’t have,” says Stralman. “And I take antibiotics every day. And that by far has been the biggest key to my development as a person and a hockey player. Feeling that security of not having to worry. That gave me really the opportunity to find my confidence again, find the key to the potential that I knew I had in there. I just couldn’t get it out.

“My idea of a good defenceman has always been a defenceman that you don’t really see much is a really good defenceman. You know? Makes simple good breakouts, first pass, doesn’t necessarily collect all the points all the time, but plays the right way, makes smart decisions, and people like that, you don’t really see those guys. You see the high points guys, you see the big hitters. That’s not me.

“Along the way you just kind of grow up, and learn stuff about yourself that you didn’t know before. You grow up I guess more as a person than as a hockey player. You know, it feels more and more like home, living over here. And that’s I guess one other thing I realized about myself — that’s when I play the best, is when I have that feeling of security, of feeling relaxed and enjoying everything.”

His children fast-forwarded him, too. They came every two years: his daughter Liv first, then his son Lowve, then another daughter, Bella, then a second son, Leo. The first two names were Swedish; Bella was named after the character in Twilight, and Leo Stralman just liked. The family adapted. The timing wasn’t coincidental: Stralman is 11 years younger than the nearest of his three older siblings.

“I always wished we were much closer,” he says. “I mean, I love them to death, but just hearing the stories of them growing up together, I wish I was there.

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“So I wanted to be a young dad. I mean, I was 15, and I wanted to play soccer with my dad, and at the time he was 55. When my youngest is 15, I’ll be not even 40. I’m looking forward to that. That’s awesome. The reason we kept going . . . me and my wife really enjoy children, and it’s great. I don’t regret anything.”

Leo was born during the lockout, and for a change, Stralman got to be around. He loved it. He looks forward to retirement, in a way. He’s come a long way, and one day he will get to be around all the time. One day he’ll just be home.