HELSINKI, Finland - Jordan Eberle has seen plenty in 17 NHL seasons, but even he had to laugh at the setting the Kraken found themselves in this week.
Practicing 121 feet below ground in what amounts to a cave was a new one.
“I mean, there’s rock coming down the elevator into like a cave,” Eberle said. “The roof was pretty low.”
The Kraken captain said the low ceiling quickly became a talking point, especially with 6-foot-9 forward Curtis Douglas in the mix.
“We were saying, ‘Doug, you have to duck’ to make sure he didn’t hit his head,” Eberle said. “But yeah, it's been great.
I mean this is my 17th year in the show. I've never done anything like this.
I was looking forward to this opportunity.”
The unusual practice site sits beneath Veikkaus Arena, where Seattle will face the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday and Saturday as part of the NHL Global Series. The underground rink was blasted out of bedrock with dynamite to get ready for the 1999 World Figure Skating Championships, and it now also serves as a civil defense shelter.
That dual purpose is hardly an accident in Finland. The country built out one of the world’s most extensive civil protection systems because of its wartime history and later fears tied to the Cold War and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
Today, Finland has about 50,000 civil defense shelters that can hold 4.8 million people in a nation of about 5.7 million. In Helsinki alone, 5,500 shelters can house 995,000 people in a city of 700,000.
Buildings larger than 1,200 square meters are required to include their own underground bunkers, and the Veikkaus Arena project was shaped by that reality from the start. When the building, then known as Hartwall Arena, opened in 1997, it had to include a separate training rink for the upcoming world figure skating event. With limited room above ground, the solution was to build it below ground and meet the bunker requirement at the same time.
The result is a place locals call “The Cave.” A long ramp with stairs leads down through bored-out rock walls and ceiling, though an elevator is also available. Inside, the rink is wrapped in stone, with ventilation tubes running overhead and full locker room facilities tucked into the underground space.
Jokerit uses the rink as its practice home, and the setup is part of a broader underground network in Helsinki that supports regular civilian activity while remaining ready to convert into shelter within 72 hours if needed. Annual inspections make sure that capability stays intact.
For years, the arena above ground drew less attention than the space underneath it. That changed after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which triggered major problems for the arena’s Russian owners, Roman Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko.
Timchenko, who made his fortune in oil trading, has been named by the US as part of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. He has often been photographed playing hockey with Putin and other members of the Russian elite, including the Rotenberg family. Rotenberg serves as vice president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation and general manager of the Russian national team, and he is described as a prominent “second-generation” member of the Rotenberg family.
The arena’s final events before the shutdown were a hockey game in January 2022 and a televised Finnish sports gala. After that, sanctions tied to Russia’s invasion created a cascade of problems. The venue was boycotted by the entertainment industry, banks and insurance companies refused to provide essential services, and Hartwall ended its naming-rights deal.
By September 2024, electricity, heating and water had been cut off because of unpaid bills. In November 2024, the city said it would begin a forced takeover of the venue, which had reportedly developed a bad smell from sitting unused. Trevian, a Finnish real estate and asset management company, finalized a deal to buy the arena from the Russians in February 2025.
The building reopened 13 months ago.
Jokerit had played there from the arena’s opening in 1997 until the 2022 closure, after moving to the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League in 2014. Following the invasion, the club left the KHL in 2023 and played in Finland’s second-tier Mestis at the smaller Helsinki Ice Hall before returning to its old home. By then, the team had made its way back into Finnish pro hockey and was allowed into top-tier Liiga, where it now plays.
Now Helsinki is back in the NHL Global Series mix for the first time since 2018, and the Kraken got a practice experience that fit the city’s reputation for doing things a little differently.
“I mean, you could tell the guys were all jumpy, getting out there for the first time,” Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour said. “It’s pretty cool.
A pretty cool arena there. And then obviously seeing the Jokerit locker room and getting to meet those guys quick, it was a cool atmosphere that you only get to experience a few times here.”
In Other News...
Kraken Global Showcase Turns Frustrating For Seattle In All The Wrong Ways
The Krakens trip to Helsinki was supposed to feel like a showcase moment, with Seattle getting the rare chance to play a home game overseas as part of the NHL Global Series. Instead, the night belonged to Carolina, which skated away with a 4-1 win in front of a crowd that had plenty to cheer about beyond the scoreboard. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman framed the event as part of the leagues push to connect with European fans, and on this night the atmosphere fit that mission even if the result did not favor Seattle.
For the Kraken, the frustration went beyond the final score. Coach Lane Lambert said afterward that the team had a plan but did not stick to it, a familiar kind of postgame concern when execution slips in a showcase setting. What made the loss sting a little more was the way Carolinas scoring played out, with Finnish players accounting for three of the goals and giving the local crowd even more reason to stay engaged while Seattle searched for answers. [Read more 🡒]