© André Ringuette/NHLI

The Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers have taken a break from their North American portion of the NHL schedule to play two games at Nokia Arena in Tampere in the 2024 NHL Global Series Finland presented by Fastenal. The games are Friday (2 p.m. ET; Victory+, SCRIPPS, NHLN, SN) and Saturday (Noon ET; Victory+, SCRIPPS, NHLN, SN1).

Stars defenseman Esa Lindell will be keeping a blog this week 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 Helsinki and Tampere. The defenseman’s third entry was written after media day and practice at Nokia Arena on Thursday.

The sightseeing and all the excitement have been great, but we are putting that stuff behind us now and getting back to work and focusing more on the games ahead against the Panthers.

We are playing the Stanley Cup champions and that is a challenge. It’s exciting to play the champions, but at the same time, we don’t want to put too much into it. They are a good team, and it is going to be a good matchup for sure. I’m looking forward to it very much.

There have been so many highlights already and we have the games left to play, but I would have to say the highlight so far is just showing off both cities here in Finland for the teammates, the restaurants, different places, all the stuff we have here.

I’m so happy that we have been able to show the boys and the organization Finland in the fall in the days before the games and obviously the games are the cherry on top of the cake, so that is the main thing in the end.

Last night we went for chicken wings at Hook Restaurant. I really like it. There were a bunch of different sauces and I’m glad the boys got to enjoy that.

We let Roope Hintz pick the place because he is from here and we passed to the torch to him. It’s his town so he is making his decision. They say the best wings are here, that this is the City of Wings. But I would say the wings in Helsinki are as good, but I don’t know if Roope would agree with that.

Speaking of Roope, he looked good in that gold helmet today. In Europe, the leading scorer on each team wears a gold helmet. It wasn’t my idea. Someone had put it out for him already. He hasn’t had too many chances to wear that. It was funny and it brings back the memories when we played here in the Finnish League ourselves.

That’s all for now. Looking forward to playing here tomorrow.