(Malmö, Sweden)

One of my goals on this trip was to see a professional (ice) hockey game.  This proved to be difficult in Denmark, as there does not appear to be a professional team based close to downtown Copenhagen. However, with Malmö, Sweden, now easily accessible by bridge (you used to have to take a boat), I had another option.

The Swedish Hockey League (SHL) is one of the top professional leagues in the world. While it is a notch below the NHL and Russia’s KHL, it nonetheless features some premier hockey talent and a very dedicated (and knowledgeable) fan base. On November 24, I was able to watch a regular season SHL game between the Malmö Redhawks and Brynäs IF.

As with European soccer, the crowd was enthusiastic and did not rely on gimmicks to get into the spirit of the game.  The hardcore Malmö supporters were in a standing area at one end of the ice, complete with drums!   Actually, I suppose there was one gimmick:  the Redhawks came on the ice at the beginning of the game through the mouth of a giant inflatable hawk:  lasers and explosions were in abundance.

Malmö started off the season strong but had been faltering of late.  Against Brynäs, they definitely controlled most of the game but had a very hard time scoring on David Rautio, the talented Brynäs goalkeeper.  In the second period,  Brynäs took the lead on a goal that the goal judge missed because it went in so quickly.  A look at the video replay confirmed that the puck did in fact go into the net.

Going into the third period, Brynäs was holding on to a slim 1-0 lead.  Things looked even worse for the home team when Malmö took a five-minute major penalty for a check to the head in the third period. However, they managed to kill off the major penalty and take one last run at solving the Rautio mystery.

With four minutes left in the game, Malmö finally scored on a rebound to tie the game.  Brynäs took a penalty shortly afterwards, on a scary play that saw a Malmö player crash into the Brynäs goalkeeper (and net) at high speed.  On the resulting power play, Malmö scored on another rebound with just two minutes remaining and the home crowd was rewarded with a narrow victory.

While the skill level was very high, I thought that the players had a tendency to forego shooting opportunities when they were close to the opponent’s goal.  There might have been more goals in this game if the forwards had shot the puck more often rather than trying to make that one final pass close to the net.  If you want to see the highlights, they are currently located at this link.

It was great fun to see the game and I will definitely try to catch another one if I am ever in Europe during the winter months.  I went to a Swiss League game about 10 years ago and that was a little crazier (probably because thousands of spectators from the visiting team made the trip by train and were not feeling much pain by the time they arrived in Zürich).

Stay tuned for more on the actual city of Malmö!