Recapping our Scandinavian Adventure

As you may have read last week, we hosted a couple of Scandinavia’s finest hockey influencers in Edmonton over the weekend. That’s right, we had two international celebrities in our city living the life of Oilers fans, and I’m going to tell you all about it! 

Uffe Bodin, editor-in-chief of hockeysverige.se and Larvinen, Finland’s biggest hockey fan flew out to Edmonton on Thursday night. Our two guests had a very long, 16-hour travel day only to find out that they had spent a portion of it with Connor McDavid. 

It couldn’t have been a more symbolic introduction to our beautiful city, having ran into Connor after sharing connecting flights from Toronto. As Uffe wrote in his most recent article: without Connor McDavid, they may not have even taken this trip to Edmonton. Connor has changed our city for the better, giving us opportunities we never thought possible. It was only fitting for him to be the first Edmontonian they met. Next to Nation teammate Adam, of course. 

We invited Uffe & Larvinen out to experience first hand what being an Edmonton Oilers fan in this city is all about. And that’s exactly what happened. The tour began Friday morning with breakfast in Edmonton’s best cafe, The Little Brick. This is where Uffe & Larvinen met the Oilersnation gang and heard our story of what the Oilers and City of Edmonton mean to us. This followed with tours of the oversized Stanley Cup at United Cycle, West Edmonton Mall, and dinner at Have Mercy on Whyte Ave.

On Friday the boys also got the chance to appear on the TSN 1260 Jason Gregor show where they chatted about all sorts of global hockey talk. Larvinen’s story of eating hotdogs at Essa Tikkanen’s Super Bowl party won over all of the listeners, and even had people stopping them in the streets afterwards to say hi.

Saturday was Hockey Day In Edmonton! One of Uffe’s goals coming into Edmonton was to get a chance to talk to the Swedes of the team, and that he did. Uffe attended the morning practice in Rogers Place while getting his chance to interview Klefbom, Lander, and Larsson. The boys later got the grand tour of Rogers Place, met the rest of the team, and saw the holiness that is the Oilers dressing room. Don’t mind me as I sit and sulk in jealousy!

Our pre-game beverages happened at Crash Hotel right across the street from the arena. They treated our guests to some delicious food as always! Despite the embarrassing 5-1 loss to the Blackhawks, the hockey game was an insanely fun time. The game was Larvinen’s first NHL experience ever, and Uffe’s first time seeing Edmonton on home ice! 

If you can’t tell by the pictures, Larvinen was the life of the party in any room he walked into. We learned pretty quickly after meeting him that he’s without a doubt the greatest hockey fan in Finland. Big thanks to the Edmonton Oilers for putting him on the jumbotron! 

After the game we took the boys out to have their VERY FIRST donair experience! Donairs are a staple of Edmonton and devouring a couple (five) was obviously on the list of things to do. 

The day wrapped up with a party at you-know-where….. The Pint. Because every good day should be topped off with a party at The Pint. The weekend of international fun ended on Sunday with a visit Canada’s most impressive Ice Castle. We couldn’t let our visitors leave town without seeing at least one sports team win, though, so on Sunday afternoon we also took in the Oil Kings game. Believe it or not, the team broke a 16-game losing streak in overtime to give Uffe & Larvinen a taste of an Edmonton victory! Sunday unfortunately had to come to an end, and the boys flew back home on Monday. 

Overall, the weekend turned out better than we ever could have expected. Edmonton made two new international friends, and we’ll be happy to have Uffe & Larvinen back to visit any time. Please find them on their social media feeds (Larvinen: SnapChat, Facebook, Instagram) (Uffe Bodin: Twitter, Instagram) and show them some Edmonton love! 

We couldn’t have made any of this possible without help from our good friends at Edmonton Tourism. This city has so much to offer, and we’re glad we had the chance to prove it. A HUGE thanks to Icelandair for getting our travellers here and back safe and sound. They’re the BEST source of air travel from Scandinavia. 

Never forget to #ExploreEdmonton.