The Seattle Kraken and Carolina Hurricanes have taken a break from their North American portion of the NHL schedule to play two games at Veikkaus Arena in Helsinki for the 2026 NHL Global Series Finland. The games are Thursday (12 p.m. ET; HHN, Prime Video, CARNHL, KONG, NHLN, SN+, TVAS) and Saturday (1 p.m. ET; HHN, Prime Video, CARNHL, KONG, KING, NHLN, SN1).
Hurricanes forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi will keep a blog with NHL.com throughout the Global Series, giving fans a taste of what life is like on the ground as they go through the experience in Finland. Kotkaniemi’s first entry was written after the team landed in Helsinki after an eight-hour flight and went straight to their first practice at Veikkaus Arena’s underground rink, known as “The Cave,” on Monday.
It was a long flight. We had a quick dinner on the plane, watched a little bit of shows, but I think everyone tried to shut it down pretty quick because it was flying against the night. You want to be ready for today's practice, but, you know, sometimes it’s a little harder sleeping on the plane.
I sat next to Sebastian Aho, and we played a little Yahtzee and then we were just sleeping the rest of time. We don’t always play Yahtzee, but it seemed like a good idea. It was a bit of fun there before sleeping.
Sebastian and I don’t always sit next to each other on flights. A lot of times he is at one card table and I’m at the other.
I think it's great to be here; I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Finally being here and being able to share with our team is a surreal feeling. The idea of having a lot of family and friends in the stands, as well, is pretty cool. Everyone's not always able to travel all the way to the United States to see us play. There will be a lot of first-timers in the stands. It'll be such a cool week coming, I think.
I probably will have 30 or 40 people coming that I know of, but I think there's still some other people coming and the list will keep growing.
Part of the specialness of being here is that this is where we are from. This is our culture. Back in North America, we're always chirping all the guys when we go to their hometown that if you would go in Finland, we would show you guys around a lot more. Now, I think we need to back that up.
We want them to spend time here getting to know the Finnish culture a little bit. I think everyone's pretty pumped about it, excited to see the saunas and all that.
I think there's a lot of guys that are going to enjoy this week. A bunch of guys are asking questions like where should they go to get Finnish food and get the sauna feeling and what they should do.
Any time you can get back here is pretty cool, but to come here and play as the Stanley Cup champions, I feel not many guys can say that. It’s a nice touch, actually.
I brought my Stanley Cup ring with me and I’m going to give it to my parents. They're going to take it home. They getting to see that first time, too, so that will be pretty cool.
I’ve never played upstairs in this building, but I played downstairs, where we practiced, a few times in juniors for Pori.
Today brought back a lot of memories, it kind of brought me back to the junior days right away. I think the previous time we were there, I must have been like 15 years old or something. So, getting back here after 10 years with some other team, it's pretty cool and it's a funny feeling.
It feels awesome, you know, more than I could even dream about coming back to Finland, to play hockey with an NHL team -- never mind thinking about winning the Cup the season before.
That is something that's even hard to dream about.
