Emil Malysjev was on vacation with his family in Greece when he got the news.

“I was very excited, I was very glad,” the 17-year-old said.

The Saskatoon Blades were in need of an upgrade to their blueline this offseason, and the big Swede fit the bill, becoming the 23rd overall pick in the 2018 CHL Import draft in June.

"I haven't heard anything about Saskatoon, or Saskatoon Blades, so everything is brand new to me. I just wanted to come to Canada and play."

Now he’s in Canada, he’s playing, and his team seems pleased with their selection.

"He's a calm, rangy player,” said Blades’ associate general manager Steve Hildebrand. “Obviously we felt we needed some help on the back end, and we could do that through the import draft. We were very comfortable in all our scouting reports with him."

It’s not Malysjev’s first time in Canada - he’d visited Quebec on a family vacation when he was 12. He doesn’t speak French, but his other linguistic abilities are helping to ease his transition to North America.

“Everyone in our family speaks pretty good English,” he said, in pretty good English. “It helps very much. If I hadn’t English here, it would be much harder to communicate with the coaches and with the guys as well.”

His parents immigrated to Uppsala, Sweden from St. Petersburg, Russia in 1999. So naturally, Malysjev learned Russian and Swedish when he came along in 2001. But his “pretty good English” came courtesy of his mother Elaina, who is an English language teacher in Stockholm, where the family relocated shortly after he was born.

“None of them was hard to learn,” he said. “Because I spoke Russian at home, and every day when I was outside or playing with my friends I spoke Swedish. When you're little the language is pretty easy to learn."

Like many import players before him, Malysjev is now adapting to the style of play in the Western Hockey League; a smaller ice surface means making decisions more quickly, especially for a defenceman. But he believes his skillset and his size, a shade under 6’4 while pushing 190 pounds, is making for a smooth acclimation.

“I think I’m getting better and better for each day,” he said. “I’m a big guy, I have a good reach, and the smaller rink, it’s good for me.”

The trick for new head coach Mitch Love is putting the big Swede in the best spot to succeed.

“What I gather from what was advertised over the summer, he is what he is,” said Love. “A big, rangy defenceman that skates pretty well for a big man. He has some nice hands, can move the puck.

“He fits into our group, and where he slots right now as a young 17-year-old defenceman I’m not quite sure, he hasn’t played one regular season game in the Western Hockey League yet. But like most young defencemen it takes him some time to grow, and I think he’s going to be an okay player as we go upon things here.”

Malysjev and the Blades open their regular season on the road against the Swift Current Broncos on Friday, Sept. 21.