I’m a bit sleep deprived and at an airport, which honestly is where I do some of my best writing.
As you may have read earlier this week, I was headed to Sweden this week for some work with Elite Prospects. It’s been a whirlwind, I worked a few days in downtown Stockholm, diving through the final stages of a new magazine project for EP, went to multiple games at Hovet Arena, jumped into the Baltic Sea, and recorded my first-ever Gordie Howe hat trick in the EP company game on Saturday morning.
This was also my first extended trip to Sweden, so while I’ve worked with Swedes on a daily basis and have covered many in the NHL, this my first live snap shot into Swedish hockey culture.
Some day, hopefully, I’ll spend a bit more time in the country and travel further outside Stockholm, similar to what I did in Finland in 2019, when I visited more than 30 rinks in a week when I worked at my prior employer.
In the meantime, consider this my crash course in Swedish hockey and its culture, but also understand this is heavily with a Stockholm twist.
I went to two games, both at Hovet, an arena in Stockholm that is home to both Djurgården and AIK. AIK is currently in the HockeyAllsvenskan, the second tier of Swedish hockey, while Djurgården is playing in the SHL.
The two teams have shared an arena since Hovet was opened in 1955, the building didn’t have a roof until 1962. It’s a pretty heated rivalry, for policing issues there have been times when games played between Djurgården and AIK have only allowed fans of the home team for practical safety, including the 2025 HockeyAllsvenskan championship series where Djurgården won and gained promotion to the SHL at AIK’s expense.
It’s a pretty wild thing to see, on Friday we were at the game and AIK played Västerås IK. All the signage, including retired numbers and championships banners, represented AIK. The only evidence of Djurgården’s presence in the building was that both teams have their logos in the ice.
The next day, when Djurgården played Malmo, the same thing could be said about AIK. All of the signage, retired numbers and banners from the night before were gone and replaced by Djurgården.
The respective levels of the two teams right now is pretty apparent, even if AIK is one of the top contenders this season in the HockeyAllsvenskan to win promotion back to the SHL.
The AIK game felt like it was about 60 percent full, there were only 19 visiting fans from Västerås, and while there was a group of supporters that were lively all game, it lacked some punch because of the attendance.
As multiple Swedes told me on the trip, AIK has had a somewhat sadder fall when it comes to popularity right now, there are some old wounds that haven’t healed from missing out on potential promotion a few years back.
Djurgården on the other hand, well, I’ll let some videos tell more of the story here to start.
And that’s pretty reflective of the atmosphere throughout the game, flags waving fans singing and chanting the entire time, and all of it in Swedish, so I’m not sure what was being said beyond hearing “Djurgården” and other select English words.
European sports, from a fan perspective are so much better. It’s participatory and lively, I’ve seen hockey games in Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands now, and all of them have had better crowd atmospheres than any game I’ve been to in North America. (I’ve been told by Europeans that German hockey fans actually raise that another notch, which I’m hoping to see at some point later this season.)
Both games turned out pretty well, too. Both the AIK and Djurgården games went past regulation, with AIK winning in overtime and Djurgården winning in a shootout against Malmo (another note, in the SHL, both teams shoot at the same end, with goalies rotating in and out of the net, similar to soccer).
It was a ton of fun, like I’ve written about before, if you get the chance, go find hockey in other parts of the world, take it in and enjoy the universal language.
Again, this is only a snapshot of hockey in Sweden, but I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up what happened on Saturday morning, where I played in the annual Elite Prospects company game, over at a place called the Ice Academy.
The Ice Academy features two smaller rinks, they have mini zambonis, and it’s owned by Christian "Fimpen" Eklund, the dad of NHLers William and Viktor.
Another related European hockey crowd note, Djurgården fans apparently have a song/chant where they plead with Fimpen Eklund to procreate more after the impact his lineage has had on Djurgården between his first two sons.
As for this company hockey game, for a company that’s dedicated to hockey like Elite Prospects, there aren’t too many people in the office that play regularly. That was one of the interesting parts of my week in Stockholm actually working in the offices, there are so many smart people in the tech and data space that ended up in hockey through Elite Prospects, and I learned a ton from them.
For that reason, the level of play was middling at best, but it also gave me a chance to skate out instead of playing goalie, where, for the first time in my life, I recorded my own Gordie Howe hat trick with a goal, an assist, and a fight before the final buzzer.
The goal was actually one of the prettier goals I’ve ever scored, and the fact that it came wearing fully borrowed gear, with skates that I needed to quickly sharpen after they clearly had no edge on my first shift, while on another continent makes it an even better story.
Don’t really care about the bad form on the skating or the stick handling here, I’m going to be telling the story about that shot, going top shelf for the rest of my life.
I also had an assist although it wasn’t impressive enough for our Elite Prospects scouting team to pull a clip from, like they did with the goal for me.
And then at the end of the game, with things kind of out of hand — our team lost — there was a bit of a kerfuffle with both goalies fighting, and leaving me an opportunity to square off with my pal Mitch Brown, who happens to be Elite Prospects director of scouting.
There were no words spoken about it, but we made sure to properly drop the gloves and the remove the helmets, and had the informal nod that we would be following Anchormen rules, no touching of the hair or face.
It was a blast, I think I won with the takedown, but Mitch got a couple good shots in. Because Elite Prospects is a media company, we had a photographer there capture the chaos, of both the kerfuffle and my over-the-top celebration of my goal in front of the opposing bench.
OK, I’m off to London for a couple days. Going pivot from hockey to soccer, so I’ll probably write something from that as well.
I know the NHL season has been going on, I actually watched an NHL game on my phone on the way to the airport, and there will be more on that coming later this week.