Don’t forget:

The Tonight show with Leino (at iihf.com), and my nhl.com column here, or below.

Bring a buddy
A new guy in the group always gets a label pretty fast. When I first moved to Sweden, I was the “designated Finn” in the office. Whenever a discussion touched on Finland, or whenever we got Finnish clients, or even talked about Finnish clients, I was called in for the expert testimony.

I quickly added another label. Not only was I Finnish, I was also the hockey nut. So, every May, I would get emails and calls from friends and colleagues during the World Championships. Interestingly, the number of emails went up when Finland lost.

With the reputation, though, also came a nice responsibility of taking people who weren’t familiar with hockey to a game. People who were more in touch with, say, cricket, rugby, or soccer.

I loved it.

Once, I took a group of people to the Globe Arena in Stockholm to see the local Djurgarden play. One of the people in the group was an Australian guy, David, who’d never been in a hockey game before. I explained him the rules, took him around the magnificent arena – the Globe Arena was best described by another friend of mine who called it “The Death Star” from the Star Wars – and pointed out some of the details in the game.

We were seated behind the home team’s net so we had both a nice overview of everything that was happening and we saw a couple of goals up close.

David was euphoric.

“It’s so fast. It’s so gracious. It’s like .. like .. like ballet,” he exalted.

And that was just the first period. The whole twenty minutes kept him on the edge of his seat, and standing up. He mimicked the announcer who called every icing with a steady “Icing!” that echoed in the arena. David was energized by the game, but also ready for a break.

We all went to the concession stands at got ourselves hotdogs, and refreshments, and talked about the game. And just before we were about to back to our seats, David excused himself to go to the washroom.

And that’s the last we saw of him. I wasn’t really worried about him for the first ten minutes of the second period, but when he didn’t show up for the entire period, I was perplexed. I thought he liked the game, he couldn’t have just left.

Well, the second period came and went, as did the second intermission, and the third period — and no David anywhere.

Oh well, we thought. We’d just have to ask him about it the next day at work.

And just as we were walking towards the exit, out from the stands comes David, with his Australian scarf waving in the air, and his Australian accent filling the arena when he saw us.

“Wha’ a gaym, mate,” he said, and pounded my back.

“Yeah, sure, but what happened to you? Where have you been?”

“Well, see, after I got out of the bathroom, I got lost. I didn’t know which direction to go, so I just looked inside and then went to sit behind the same goalie as before. And then I just sat there.”

And then he went on to praise the game, and, yes, how gracious the players were when they moved on the ice. Sure, it was a Swedish Elite League game, but it was a surprising assessment nevertheless.

The next time David and I went to a game, we sat high up, at the blueline. Nobody got lost.

Except David. Lost in the beauty of hockey.

We’ll get’em. One by one.