Besides those Penguins, the Chicago Blackhawks played in the 2009 Premiere Series in Switzerland and Finland, the Bruins played in the 2010 Premiere Series in Ireland and Czechia, the Los Angeles Kings played in the 2011 Premiere Series in Germany, the Tampa Bay Lightning played in the 2019 Global Series in Sweden before going on to win the Stanley Cup, in addition to last season’s Panthers, who also won the Cup.
“It’s out of the routine because once the season does start you do get into your routines like, ‘All right we’re going to Chicago, OK, we’ll hit up Whole Foods, grab some food, take it back to the room, hang out, talk, go to bed at 9, wake up for the game,’” said Andrew Ference, a defenseman on that Bruins team. “It’s a life of repetition. It’s not boring, but it’s scheduled and a bit rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, so anything to throw it out of the normal is incredible.”
The moments are different on every trip.
There was the jaunt to “sauna island” for the Panthers last season, when the team took a boat to a secluded island, winter jackets on, only to spend the day in the sauna and swimming in the Baltic Sea.
There was the padel tournament organized by Ottawa Senators assistant coach Daniel Alfredsson, part of why defenseman Jake Sanderson called their trip to Stockholm “my favorite trip throughout my whole career.”
There was the scavenger hunt around Stockholm the Penguins did in 2008, taking them all over the city in teams of four, all documented on point-and-shoot cameras.
There was karaoke in China for the Bruins, beers on the top of the Great Wall.
“We had a blast,” Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy said of the team’s 2018 trip to Beijing and Shenzen, China. “We knew we were there to play some games, have some practices, but really we used it as an opportunity to bond, a lot, off the ice. Everything we did, we tried to do it together. And that was really where it was ideal for us.”
In some cities, there’s the added attraction of family time, getting to meet the parents and grandparents, friends and coaches, of teammates. That was the case for William Nylander when the Toronto Maple Leafs went to Stockholm in 2023, when he had a three-point game against the Detroit Red Wings in front of his grandmother, who had never seen him play live.
It will be the case for Predators forward Filip Forsberg and defenseman Adam Wilsby and Penguins defenseman Erik Karlsson, all of them Sweden natives.
But it’s truly the moments that teams spend together, touring cities, visiting museums, eating unfamiliar food, that provide the fodder that can bind them together for a season or forever.
“It’s nothing that you wouldn’t do as a normal tourist, just going on a vacation with your family or friends or something like that,” Ference said. “We pretty much did the same stuff that other people would do. It’s just that you never do that with your teammates. You never get to have a vacation with your teammates where you go to the torture museum in Prague, just random stuff, let’s check out the clock tower.”