In the article series International Ice, NHL.com/sv guides readers around the international hockey scene every Thursday. We do it on both the men’s and women’s side, among Swedish and other players at both higher and lower levels in Sweden, North America, in Europe and Asia. We take readers to hockey leagues and places you don’t hear about every day. So join us on a sweep around the hockey world.
Salming’s ice rink and street will soon be just a memory
The Matojärvi ice rink in Kiruna, where Börje Salming took his first skates, and Börje Salmings Gata (formerly Matojärvigatan), where the hockey icon grew up just a shot from the ice rink, will disappear when the city is relocated and rebuilt to make way for more mining. Exactly nine years ago, a vepa with Börje’s name was hoisted to the roof in Matojärvi; one that previously hung in the Air Canada Centre. A tearful ceremony for the then 65-year-old legend:
– This is where it started. Here I was also very much by myself. Dad passed away (in an accident in the mine) when I was little but my mum was great, but I almost lived here more than at home. It was so nice this and nice that mother could be here together with her brother (Stig), said Salming then.
The Swedish Hockey Association’s chairman Anders Larsson recently visited Matojärvi, which was one of Sweden’s first ice rinks, and the Lombia ice rink from the 1970s.
– It was almost magical to see Matojärvi and Lombia. And Börje Salmings Gata. And at the same time sad to know that both Matojärvi and Lombia are to be demolished now, when the new Kiruna is being built. Two ice rinks that meant so much to hockey not only in Kiruna, but in the whole of Sweden. It felt a little strange to know that when I come back to Kiruna, Börje Salmings Gata is no longer there, Larsson wrote in a column on the association’s website.
