A reset amid the sightseeing

Aside from the bonding, the series has provided a chance for both teams to pause and take stock. With the Penguins and Predators arriving in Europe on the 11th but not playing until the night of the 14th, the trip served as a welcome reset — especially for the Predators, who had lost five in a row heading to Sweden but turned it around in the first game of the series with a 2–1 overtime win.

“We’ve just come off a stretch of 12 [games] in 20 [days] so it was kind of a nice little reset to be away from all the noise and enjoy the experience of coming to Stockholm, such a great city, to be part of a unique experience,” head coach Andrew Brunette said Friday morning prior to his team’s win.

Unsurprisingly, the Swedish natives on each team have taken the lead in planning activities for their teammates.

“That’s kind of the beauty of us being here as long as we are before we play,” said the Predators’ Steven Stamkos, a native of Canada, of the three and a half day gap between arriving and Friday night’s first game. 

“Just to get the guys together… Fil [Forsberg] and Willy [Adam Wilsby] have done a great job of hosting the dinners and putting everything together. It’s a big part of it, we’ve got a great bunch of guys here and we’ve certainly enjoyed it.”

On the Penguins, the job has fallen to the injured Rickard Rakell, who’s from Stockholm. His fellow Swede Erik Karlsson, an Olympic silver medallist with Team Sweden at Sochi 2014, told Olympics.com that not being from the capital, he was more than happy to let Rakell do the job.

“I have diverted most of the local tourism to him, he’s from here and this is his first time doing this,” Karlsson said. “I was here [in Sweden] in ’17 with Ottawa, so did a lot of things then, so I’m kind of letting him take the lead.

“Obviously there’s a lot of questions that the guys have and they’ve asked me a lot of things about Sweden in general. It’s a fun experience to be able to share that with guys that you’ve played with for so long.”