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\u2019s Panthers, who also won the Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s out of the routine because once the season does start you do get into your routines like, \u2018All right we\u2019re going to Chicago, OK, we\u2019ll 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,\u2019\u201d said Andrew Ference<\/a>, a defenseman on that Bruins team. \u201cIt\u2019s a life of repetition. It\u2019s not boring, but it\u2019s scheduled and a bit rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, so anything to throw it out of the normal is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n The moments are different on every trip.<\/p>\n There was the jaunt to \u201csauna island\u201d 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.<\/p>\n There was the padel tournament organized by Ottawa Senators assistant coach Daniel Alfredsson, part of why defenseman Jake Sanderson<\/a> called their trip to Stockholm \u201cmy favorite trip throughout my whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n There was karaoke in China for the Bruins, beers on the top of the Great Wall.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a blast,\u201d Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy<\/a> said of the team\u2019s 2018 trip to Beijing and Shenzen, China. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n In some cities, there\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n It will be the case for Predators forward Filip Forsberg<\/a> and defenseman Adam Wilsby<\/a> and Penguins defenseman Erik Karlsson<\/a>, all of them Sweden natives.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nothing that you wouldn\u2019t do as a normal tourist, just going on a vacation with your family or friends or something like that,\u201d Ference said. \u201cWe pretty much did the same stuff that other people would do. It\u2019s 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\u2019s check out the clock tower.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Besides those Penguins, the Chicago Blackhawks played in the 2009 Premiere Series in Switzerland and Finland, the Bruins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-274934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}