“It’s been great meeting so many of them,” she said, laughing. On Wednesday in Helsinki, she ran into a throng of Blue Jackets fans and ended up in a pub. She flew from Manchester to Helsinki, a three-hour flight, to see the Blue Jackets play for the first time in person. They have a Twitter feed - with more than 1,600 followers. But soccer is the dominating passion, leaving fans like Hirst to build a community online. “When I heard that Laine was coming to Columbus, I was like, ‘That’s so big!'”Įngland does have its own league, so it’s not as if hockey is a foreign concept there. “I’ve always been one to follow the draft, and obviously the year that Laine was available (2016) we took Pierre-Luc Dubois (No. Just like Sotavalta, Hirst said the Laine trade pushed her support for the Blue Jackets into a different stratosphere. I watched a Columbus game and … I wasn’t expecting the cannon. “I was watching NHL games, to see which team might catch my fancy,” Hirst said. The two have communicated on social media before but finally met in person on Thursday.Ī few sections away sat Amy Hirst, a fan from Yorkshire, England, who fell in love with the Blue Jackets the moment she caught a game on TV in 2015. Her hair color could be called Stinger green. Sotavalta, wearing a Blue Jackets sweater, stood nose-against-the-glass beside Dani Smith, who lives in Lewis Center, Ohio (a Columbus suburb), and who was decked out in a “Team Finland” Laine sweater. It was quite a scene at Thursday’s practice in Nokia Arena. The Blue Jackets estimate that more than 200 made the trip for these games from Columbus for the games against the Colorado Avalanche on Friday and Saturday.Ī harder number to quantify is how many Blue Jackets fans live in Finland - the “5th Line” translates to “Viides Linja,” by the way - and are treating this weekend as their own once-in-a-lifetime event. One of the sweet stories surrounding the NHL’s Global Series is the fans on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve never been to Columbus, but I’m actually traveling in January to watch them play in Nationwide Arena.” “I’ve always dreamed of traveling to see the Jackets play. “Then I made my decision to travel to Columbus, too,” she said. And when Laine signed his contract extension last summer? When the NHL announced late last season that the Blue Jackets would play two games in Finland as part of the league’s Global Series, Sotavalta, who is from Pirkkala, Finland, booked a ticket to Helsinki.
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