For Oduya, the chance to play a regular-season NHL game in his hometown wasn't a thought in his mind when he signed a one-year, $1 million contract with the Ottawa Senators on July 24.
"It would probably be quite unprofessional to make a decision based on that, but I actually had no real idea that was going on, so somebody texted me afterwards and said, oh, you're coming back in November," Oduya said.
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That was when the lightbulb turned on, and he realized that, as a member of the Senators, he would be coming to Stockholm for the 2017 SAP NHL Global Series when the Senators play the Colorado Avalanche at Ericsson Globe on Friday (2 p.m. ET; NHLN, ALT, TSN5, RDS, NHL.TV) and Saturday (1 p.m. ET; NHLN, SN, RDS, ALT, NHL.TV).
"I was like, oh yeah, those games are going on. I didn't really think about that, so that was a pleasant surprise, of course," he said. "A bonus."
For Nemeth, it was much of the same, though he didn't have a choice about heading to Colorado. In his case, he was claimed off waivers by the Avalanche from the Stars on Oct. 3. And though he knew, in the back of his mind, that the Stockholm games were coming up, it wasn't something he thought about immediately upon being claimed.
"It was pretty quick, it was maybe a couple days when things got settled down a little bit, we were starting to talk about that," Nemeth said. "They were going to want to come and see the game. Everything is positive. It's an awesome feeling to be here."
Oduya and Nemeth, though, have been content to remain in the background, to let their more vocal, more voluble teammates show off their city, watching as best friends Fredrik Claesson and Gabriel Landeskog have taken the lead.