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The Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers have taken a break from the North American portion of their NHL schedules to play two games at Nokia Arena in Tampere for the 2024 NHL Global Series Finland presented by Fastenal.

Panthers forward A.J. Greer is keeping 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. Greer’s third entry was written after he had the primary assist on Mackie Samoskevich’s game-winning goal in a 6-4 win for the Panthers in the first game on Friday.

TAMPERE, Finland — That was awesome.

It’s always exciting playing in kind of unknown territory, and this was a great experience.

Right from warmups the building was pretty packed and there was good energy. Our team came out right away and played the right way in the first period.

The second period was a lot of penalties and up and down, but the third period they pushed back, and that’s what you expect from a team that’s down.

I was super happy to see Aleksander Barkov play so well in front of his home crowd with a goal and three assists. I think all the Finns on the team had an amazing time.

There are just so many guys on this team that I don’t understand how they’re so good all the time, so consistent. Barkov and his line, Sergei Bobrovsky in the net, and our defensemen are just so consistent. Those are guys that you look up to and you want to emulate their play and how consistent they are.

It was Barkov’s idea that we arrive at the arena wearing the sauna robes. That was funny. The team made us robes for our sauna day in Helsinki on Wednesday, and we decided to wear them. So, good thing we got the win because walking out of the rink with a loss would’ve been tough. But it was fun experience, and it was fun to contribute.

Mackie’s goal started with a great defensive play. We kind of collapsed when it was needed, we didn’t give them much, and then the puck squirted out. Niko Mikkola got it to me on the wall, I took a couple of steps and saw their far defenseman take a step in. We call it surfing. He surfed up on me and Mackie bit into the inside, and then I just wanted to lay the puck into space.

Mackie took a step and he’s a great skater. He can outskate guys. He used his speed, and he has an amazing shot. He beat the goalie clean. It was an amazing play by him.

It’s always nice to get an assist, but I’m not playing to get points. It was about the win. It was great just to finish that play off because he beat their guy up the ice, and he skated and then made a great shot.

There’s definitely areas we have to improve on in the second game on Saturday (noon ET; Victory+, SCRIPPS, NHLN, SN1). Overall, it wasn’t a perfect game, but what matters is the two points, and we made sure we secured that win. Again, we got amazing goaltending from Bobrovsky, and our leaders stepped up and our defensemen were on it.

So, we’re really happy with the result.