David Landes was 16 years old when his St. Paul Academy (SPA) hockey coach asked who would host the team’s newest player, a foreign exchange student from Sweden, for the 1990-91 season. Landes’ hand was the first to shoot up.

Thirty-five years later, Landes and Dan Nyberg, his high school hockey teammate and foreign exchange “brother,” reunited in the Twin Cities with one goal in mind: Expose their sons, Tim and Niklas, and 16 other high school-aged Swedish players to Minnesota hockey.

Jarfalla Hockey Club, an under-18 Swedish team, traveled 4,256 miles from the northeast suburbs of Stockholm for the World Juniors Exhibition Showcase, a seven-game series against Junior Gold A teams across the metro from Dec. 31 to Jan. 4.

But the 10-day trip to the U.S. — complete with a college tour of St. Olaf, a Gophers basketball game and a SPA practice session — wasn’t about hopping on a plane back home victorious after beating White Bear Lake 8-2 or watching Sweden’s under-20 national team take down Team USA in a World Junior Championship game on New Year’s Eve.

It wasn’t really about hockey at all. The team’s journey to Minnesota, over three decades in the making, was about finding a common language.

“Hockey indirectly changed the trajectory of my life,” Landes recalled from the stands during the World Juniors game between Sweden vs. Switzerland on Dec. 28. “Hockey has been this glue. Hockey is something that everyone can unite around, understand and remind us more of what we have in common than our differences.”

The sport also changed the life trajectory of Nyberg, who sat just a few seats down at Grand Casino Arena, watching white and yellow jerseys barrel into each other.

“[We thought] maybe we can get all these Swedish kids together and celebrate this common passion and expose them to high school hockey here,” Nyberg added.

Merging hockey styles

As a snowstorm plummeted down onto St. Paul, 18 Swedish hockey players in red jerseys spun laps around one side of Drake Arena’s rink. St. Paul Academy players, wearing navy blue and gold jerseys, took the opposite end of the ice.

“Five push-ups if you miss the net,” instructed head SPA coach Bill McClellan during a sunny post-Christmas Monday morning practice. The Jarfalla Hockey Club players turned their heads to the bench as their coaches mimicked a push-up motion in translation.

The two teams, one talking hockey in Swedish and the other in English, found something in common when shooting drills started. Red jerseys began to pair up with navy and gold.

“Intermingle, everybody’s playing against everybody,” McClellan encouraged.

Landes organized the practice session, jersey swap and brunch both as an introduction to North America’s smaller rink size before the exhibition showcase began and as a trip down memory lane.

“I think it’s a way to give back a little bit and acknowledge the starting point of this,” Landes said. “This experience would not have happened without my experience at SPA.”

Landes and Nyberg’s story goes back further than 1990, said former SPA coach Jim Steiner.

Steiner, who graduated from the former Murray High School in St. Paul, heard about a Swedish hockey player who wanted to play stateside through his former Yale University hockey teammate Keith Allain. At the time, Allain, who went on to coach in the NHL and at Yale, was leading Nyberg’s team in Jarfalla, Sweden.

When a 17-year-old Nyberg touched down in St. Paul, Steiner remembered him bringing a style of play unlike anyone else in the state.

“His stick skills were phenomenal,” Steiner said. “I don’t know how they developed that in Sweden, but he was superior to almost anyone in the state that year. I played him a lot. I played him probably two-thirds of a game or even more.”

Mickey Tierney, Nyberg and Landes’ former teammate and an SPA dad, recalled the 1990-91 season fondly while watching SPA practice with Jarfalla.

“It was like a whole different brand of hockey than we’d ever seen,” Tierney said.

One on-ice memory sticks with him: “When I finally got out on the ice one shift, I got the puck. I thought I was gonna get clobbered by the defenseman. I had no idea what to do with it, and all of a sudden — he had this bright yellow helmet — he skated by, took the puck right off my stick, went down and scored a goal,” Tierney said. “That was my first point. Hearing my name called over the loudspeakers was awesome.”

“He made everybody just a little better,” Steiner said. “He had a big impact on SPA during those years.”

A life-altering trip

Nyberg’s skills and connections at SPA catapulted him to Yale, where Steiner recalled then-head coach Tim Taylor, who also coached the 1984 and 1994 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey teams, saying the Swede was one of the best defensemen he had coached. Nyberg met his wife in college and decided to stay in the U.S., working as an economist for the International Monetary Fund and raising his family in Washington, D.C.

Landes swapped lives with Nyberg. He moved to Sweden for an internship, met his wife and raised his children in the same suburb where Nyberg grew up. Landes’ son now plays for the same club 17-year-old Nyberg did before coming to SPA. Nyberg’s son, who plays high school hockey in D.C., was an honorary Jarfalla Hockey Club teammate for the trip.

“This trip means something different for me than it does for all of these kids,” Landes said. “If it weren’t for hockey, I wouldn’t have moved to Sweden.”

Landes wanted to give the teen players the same gift Minnesota hockey gave him.

“Who knows, this may plant a seed in one of these [Swedish] kids’ heads, or suddenly for the American kids, Sweden becomes real,” Landes said. “Maybe they all exchange Snapchat details. Who knows, maybe 30 years from now, this trip will have started something in motion.”

The team’s trip may encourage a player to come to the U.S. for college hockey, something uncommon in Sweden, or simply expose them to the uniquely Minnesotan way of playing hockey.

“If nothing else, it’s given these kids at least a fantastic memory and experience and a chance to get out of the neighborhood and see something new,” Landes said. “When their hockey career is over and done, they’ll be like, ‘There was this time we went to Minnesota for the World Juniors.’”

For the two sons, Tim and Niklas, it’s a chance to share the same ice their dads once skated on together. In a Jan. 2 exhibition game, the puck kept bouncing off Tim’s stick and onto Niklas’ who promptly emptied it into the net.

“To have my team here in this country is pretty special,” said Tim Landes.

For most of the teens, it’s just a chance to watch some good hockey and play some good hockey, too.

...

Hockey Across Minnesota

Minnesotans in the NHL: Elk River’s Matt Kiersted recalls Hockey Day

The 20th anniversary of Hockey Day Minnesota is right around the corner, on Jan. 24 in Hastings, and the Wild have a newcomer this season who’s no stranger to the festivities.

Matt Kiersted competed in one of the high school games in 2014 when the event was in his hometown of Elk River. The defenseman played a part in a 4-1 win for the Elks over Stillwater — a game Kiersted considers his best high school hockey memory.

“Just being from Minnesota, hockey is everything,” he said. “Very grateful for the city of Elk River, all the coaches [and] people along the way. It’s been a blast.”

Kiersted would go on to join the Chicago Steel in the United States Hockey League before playing college hockey at North Dakota, where he received All-National Collegiate Hockey Conference first-team honors as a senior in 2021. He signed as a free agent with Florida, and finally, after splitting time between the Panthers and their minor league team in Charlotte for four years, hockey brought Kiersted, 27, back to his home state. The Wild signed him in July to a two-year, two-way contract.

On Dec. 13, Kiersted became the 37th Minnesota-born player to suit up for the Wild. He picked up his first assist with the team in his second game three days later.

“The guys in the room make it easy, very welcoming, make you feel comfortable,” Kiersted said. “Once you feel comfortable and confident, the game is a lot of fun.”

— Sarah McLellan

College Spotlight:

The World Junior Championship finished its 11-day run in St. Paul and Minneapolis on Jan. 5 with Sweden’s 4-2 victory over the Czech Republic in the gold medal game. Fans had a chance to witness the top under-20 hockey talent on the planet, and now the Gophers men’s hockey team will get another taste of it.

Minnesota jumps back into Big Ten play beginning Jan. 9, and the Gophers’ schedule is peppered with teams that had standout players in the World Juniors. It starts with Penn State, which features Canadian forward Gavin McKenna, who ranked second in scoring in the tournament with 14 points on four goals and 10 assists. He’s projected by many to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NHL draft.

On Jan. 16-17, a star-studded Michigan team visits 3M Arena at Mariucci. The Wolverines are led by Canadian forward Michael Hage, who paced all scorers in the World Juniors with 15 points on two goals and 13 assists. The Canadians earned the bronze medal in St. Paul, aided by Wolverines goalie Jack Ivankovic, who led the tournament with a 2.33 goals-against average and .918 save percentage.

Michigan also had five players on Team USA, which lost in the quarterfinals. Will Horcoff (1-1-2) was the top scorer in that group. The Gophers and Michigan meet again Feb. 26-27 in Ann Arbor.

Minnesota has two series against Michigan State (Jan. 23-24 in East Lansing, March 5-6 at Mariucci), and the Spartans boast the World Juniors’ top goal-scorer in Canada’s Porter Martone (6-3-9). Spartans forward Ryker Lee had two goals and an assist for Team USA.

Along with Gophers coach Bob Motzko leading Team USA, Gophers captain Brodie Ziemer (1-5-6) and freshman L.J. Mooney (0-3-3) found the score sheet.

— Randy Johnson

Top 25

Girls: The post-holidays rankings bring a new top team after Centennial/Spring Lake Park shut down Andover 8-1, Edina 6-2 and Holy Family 4-3.

Boys: Minnetonka’s third straight shutout, 4-0 against Mahtomedi, put them in the Class 2A No. 1 spot.

This week’s apple:

The World Juniors aren’t over just yet: The IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship takes place Jan. 10-18 in Nova Scotia. Ten Minnesotans, including nine playing MSHSL hockey this winter, make up the most sizable chunk of the 25-player U.S. roster. Holy Family forward and Wisconsin commit Maddy Kimbrel returns for her second consecutive tournament alongside Fire teammate Katya Sander, a future Gopher.

— Cassidy Hettesheimer

Thank you for reading Hockey Across Minnesota (HAM). Email me at olivia.hicks@startribune.com with story tips or message me on X or Instagram. See you at the rink!