Here’s one from the nhl.com blog archives. Read here or below.

History in the making

There’s an old joke I remember from being a kid about some Swedish king (and this I have to look up in Wikipedia right now) declaring to his troops: “Now, that I begin the thirty year’s war…” It was in a book I used to read, with all kinds of puns, trick questions, puzzles, and so on.

I remember the joke because, being nine years old at the time, I didn’t get it. What was so funny about it? My mother had to explain it to me.

(And now that I have checked the facts, turns out the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf wasn’t involved from the get-go so maybe he wasn’t in the joke, either).

I’ve been thinking about that joke a lot lately, having witnessed several events that are described as historic.

There was the New York Rangers historic first game against a Swiss team in Berne, Switzerland, and the next day, the Rangers were making history again, playing against Russia’s Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the inaugural Victoria Cup, a game between the European club champion and an NHL team.

A few days later, it was time for another historic event, this time in Stockholm, when the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins opened their regular season. A first, that one, too. First regular season games in Stockholm.

The following week, I was in Prague – where, by the way, two historic games had been played just three days prior when the Tampa Bay Lightning opened its regular season with two games against the Rangers – to witness the historic first round of the inaugural IIHF Champions Hockey League.

The CHL is a new competition where the champions and regular season winners of the top European hockey nations play a round robin tournament, and then a short playoffs to see who rules Europe.

A lot of history in the making. It’s breathtaking.

History today, history tomorrow.

Up at my sister-in-law’s little Swedish town, Hudiksvall, bordering the Henrik Zetterberg heartland, the local rink has set up an exhibition of different kinds of sports artifacts. “Janne Olsson’s Sport Museum,” it says on the red-and-white (told you it was Z-land) banner outside the arena entrance.

I took my son there last weekend, partly because it’s a nice father-and-son thing to do, partly because I wanted to go there anyway, and partly because that seems to be the best, and only, way to get my son to the rink. In the concept of “sports museum,” he’s drawn to the museum part.

It takes a trip to the museum to really see how much things have changed. And I’m not even talking about the early 20th century skates. Just look at the 1980s sticks. Or the 1980s goalie masks. Not to mention the goalie pads.

There was a helmet in the museum, next to a photo of Zetterberg, and a baseball cap with “Zata” on it. The helmet was made of two pieces of plastic, with the top open. Spaps, it was called. Developed by Sven “Tumba” Johansson – later just Sven Tumba – a legendary Swede, three-time world champion, sort of European Art Ross, if you will. A hockey inventor as well as a great player.

Next to that exhibition, there was a photo – to the right of the Zetterberg photo – with Inge Hammarstrom and Ulf Sterner posing in Timra sweaters, after a game. Sterner, the first European-trained player in the NHL, and Hammarstrom, world famous for never breaking the eggs in the corner – and a European hockey pioneer.

The players in Bern and Stockholm were asked time and time again what it felt like to be a part of hockey history, to be an actor in a historic event. Nobody seemed to know, really. But they said they were happy to be there.

I guess we’ll get the real answer down the road when we see who gets to be in the same case with Zetterberg in Hudiksvall, and whose skates my son will be excited to see when he grows up.

History gets made every day. But not every day is historic. Only the truly special ones.