The 2004-05 NHL lockout wiped out an entire season, but it also sent a wave of NHL stars across the Atlantic to keep playing somewhere.
Nearly 400 NHL players ended up in European leagues that year, and Sweden alone took in 75 of them. Joe Thornton and Rick Nash headed to Switzerland to play for HC Davos, Jaromir Jagr suited up for Avangard Omsk in Russia, and Pavel Datsyuk played the season at home with HC Dynamo Moscow.
Peter Forsberg headed home to his original club, Modo, bringing along former Colorado Avalanche teammates looking for game action during the work stoppage.
Peter Forsberg on Hinote
One of those teammates was Dan Hinote, a close friend and former Avalanche linemate of Forsberg’s. Hinote had never played in Sweden before, and none of the usual NHL cities or rivalries he knew carried over to a completely new league on the other side of the world.
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That lack of familiarity showed almost immediately. The day after landing in the country, Modo already had a road game against Luleå, a club located in the far northern parts of Sweden, leaving Dan Hinote no time at all to learn anything about his new surroundings.
Forsberg told the story on the podcast Puck Around and Pod Out, recalling how Hinote turned to him and several teammates in the locker room after warmups, with just five minutes before puck drop, and asked who exactly they were playing that night.
Forsberg told him it was Luleå. Hinote’s reaction, despite having no real history with the team, the city, or the league at all, was immediate.
“Good, because I HATE Luleå!” Hinote hilariously blurted out, according to Forsberg.
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