We know, the NHL Premiere was a few weeks ago, and this trip report is a few weeks late. We’ve had University work build up so much that we haven’t been able to get around to updating the site much. But anyways, here it is.

NHL Premiere Trip Report

Well, what can I say? Seeing an NHL game live and in-person was one of the most surreal things that we have ever experienced. While it’s something that folks living in NHL markets in North America can take for granted, us folks living elsewhere don’t get to see these things as often. For us at PowerPlayGoal.com, it really was an incredible experience.

Anyway, here’s a little trip report, summing up what we did over our three day stay in the wonderful city of Stockholm. Most of our time there was spent keeping our eyes peeled for any hockey related stuff.

Friday:

As we arrived in Stockholm’s T-Centrallen station, the first thing we noticed was a Sharks fan queuing up to get an SL Access card (a very, VERY efficient transport card, by the way), just as stumped as we were as to how to get hold of one. We could tell by her accent that she flew over from San Jose to see her team play. Now that’s dedication.

After arriving at our hotel and dumping our stuff in our room, we had a quick look around the city to familiarise ourselves with the place. By this time, pretty much everything was already closed for the day except for restaurants and the various supermarkets dotted all over the city.

Speaking of supermarkets, we walked into a 7 Eleven to get ourselves a drink, and found a puck shaped ice cream made by Walls. It was interesting to see, but we found out way too late that it was a grim tasting liquorice flavour. If for some strange reason you happen to like the taste of liquorice, I highly recommend it.

Saturday:

Today was the big day of our trip, the day of the game. But beforehand, we decided to look around the city to kill time, since it was several hours away and all.

Our first stop was in Gamla stan (The Old Town) just across the river from our hotel. It was quiet and empty while we were there in the morning (other than a group of tourists walking around), but we noticed a small shop selling merchandise for Sweden’s national ice hockey team, selling jerseys, pucks and scarves among other things. When we came back later in the day, I (Steven/Wildwing64) bought a puck from there as a souvenir, and upon walking out we saw a Sharks fan walk in. Since I had a Ducks jersey on, I couldn’t help but notice out of the corner of my eye a mean glare…

The rest of the day was mainly spent walking around the city. Curiosity hit us as we came across one of a few generic sports shops: since they really like hockey in Sweden, we wondered if they would have any hockey related products for sale. In England, you’d usually only see a lot of football team shirts being sold along with the equipment and the usual generic sports branded clothing. In Sweden however, it’s completely different: no football shirts much to our pleasure, and among all the things sold in there, there was hockey equipment too! Sticks, helmets, pads, skates, you name it. But from my memory I don’t remember much goalie equipment aside from a Floorball mask – very similar, but not quite the same thing.

Before heading back to our hotel, there was one more thing that I needed to pick up: NHL Slapshot for Wii from a Game store. EA didn’t bother releasing it in the UK, so now was my opportunity to get hold of the game – and we’ll have a review of that up at some point or another – I bought the game along with a second stick since, again, it wouldn’t be available at home. On a side note, it was a pleasant surprise seeing NHL 11 banners on display. It’s also interesting to note that the Sedin twins are the cover athletes for this game in Sweden.

Eventually, it was time to head to the Ericsson Globe for the game. Outside the building were people flogging fake goods such as scarves and hats. We were soon also surrounded by hockey fans. Fellow NHL fans. Lots and lots of them. Notably, there were more Sharks fans around than any other team, but not so many Blue Jackets fans – although in fairness, we did spot a few of them too. I at some point or another spotted a fellow Ducks fan and high-fived him.

There was plenty to see and do inside the arena before the game took place: there were stands selling memorabilia such as hats, souvenir pucks and overpriced jerseys, and EA had a few copies of NHL 11 running and available to play, with the teams fittingly set to San Jose and Columbus. ESPN America also had a stand that let us shoot pucks at a net: this was covered by a large goalie photo with holes in the appropriate places, and you’d have to shoot the puck through one of these holes to score and win a goody bag. Kev scored one, while I got none. Shameful.

There was another bit of interest just around the corner, which we noticed was grabbing a lot of attention and had a large queue: this was similar to ESPN America’s stand, except we were shooting pucks at a real goalie. Like ESPN’s stand, we were allowed three shots each, but none of ours got past the goaltender. Still, this was fun to try out.

While walking around the arena, we also took a quick peek inside one of the lower sections to get our first ever glance of an NHL-sized rink, inside a reasonably sized arena. This was surrealism at its best. I’m so used to seeing this only in videogames, on TV and the internet, and back at home a smaller rink and smaller capacity, and now we were both seeing the real deal, in person. It took a moment for this fact to sink in, and then we went to find our seats, up in the highest area, the C Section. We picked these seats because they were cheap, but we still got a very good view of the whole rink.

And from there, it became even more incredible. This really was a professional hockey game we were seeing. The standard of play, the fans, the music selection, the announcer… heck, just about everything instantly made it a far more enjoyable experience to us as NHL fans than our little local team back in the UK could ever provide. This game was being taken seriously.

But like all good things, this game had to come to an end at some point. The Blue Jackets won the game 3-2 in overtime, much to the dismay of the many Sharks fans present, and to those who were rooting for the “home” team to win. Admittedly us too, but oh well. We had a great time regardless. After one incredibly surreal night, we soon headed back to our hotel on a tightly packed train, and watched some of Slapshot 3 (a review of which will be up at some point or another) on Kev’s iPad before heading to bed.

Sunday:

As we got up today, it was still hard to believe that, just the day before; we had seen our very first live NHL game, and now it was time to head back home and back to normality. But first, we went sightseeing. Nothing too interesting hockey-wise to mention today, but we did go back to the Globen briefly to take some daytime photos.

On a side note, we finished watching the rest of Slapshot 3 while on the plane. As I’ve mentioned already, we’ll have a review of it up at some point. We’ll also have our similarly named NHL Slapshot review up soon enough.

Overall, the NHL Premiere in Sweden really was a fantastic experience, and we’re glad we went. We might, just might, go next year as well…