Unnumbered Thoughts: A Swedish bump for the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs

When the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2020 it was won in the COVID-induced bubble in Edmonton. 

But nearly 11 months earlier, the team came together in Stockholm and built the foundation for a championship season. 

In fact, the Lightning championship rings from the 2020 Stanley Cup have the words “Stockholm” on the bottom as a reminder of how the team came together as a group during the 2019 NHL Global Series. 

The Lightning won back-to-back games in Stockholm, eased some rocky early season terrain, and helped get rid of the lingering taste of a stunning 2019 sweep at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets after a President’s Trophy regular season. 

It’s the feeling that the Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde had been hoping for when looking at the trip for his team. 

Lalonde was an assistant on that Tampa Bay team, and with his Red Wings team surpassing early-season expectations already, he saw the trip to Sweden for the 2023 Global Series as a chance to put an exclamation point Detroit could build on. 

The opposite happened for Detroit, while their potential new rival the Ottawa Senators may have gotten the Swedish boost.