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Helsinki is Like Seattle—Only More Hockey-Obsessed
As the Kraken head to Finland in November for their first regular-season games outside North America, Seattle fans will find ferries, coffee, craft beer and a familiar devotion to life by the water.
We were maybe 15 minutes into our inaugural Helsinki stroll when my kid asked the question my jet-lagged brain had mulled over but filed under “later”:
“Where are all the cars?”
We were walking down Esplanadi on a bright June evening near the summer solstice, and the street noise was mostly gulls and the whine of a tram somewhere behind us. There were cars. Just not the wall of them you brace for in a European capital, and not the impatient churn of downtown Seattle on a weekday.
Pedestrianism is codified here, and the Finnish capital went 12 straight months without a single road death between 2024 and 2025, a stretch Euronews measured against much-lauded Paris, where 31 people died over a comparable period. In April the city opened Kruunuvuorensilta, an almost 4,000-foot span across the water connecting to the fast-growing Laajasalo district and carrying pedestrians, cyclists, and soon, trams. More than 50,000 people walked it the first weekend it opened.
The 10 time zones I had crossed to arrive here demanded coffee (it was midmorning Pacific Time, after all), and Helsinki delivers like a good seatown should. Finns drink more than a pint of it per capita per day, the highest figure on the planet. Seattle, a city that has built an entire civic personality on caffeine, is not close.
Energized by our Robert’s Coffee dark roasts and delicious Finnish cinnamon rolls known as korvapuusti, we headed towards the harbor in search of more Seatown parallels. Kauppatori, the Market Square, sits where the tram lines run out and the water begins, and from the pier, the passenger ferry to Suomenlinna leaves every 30 minutes or so, well into the night.
The same $10-ish day ticket that gets you around the city also covers the ferry ride (rental cars are superfluous), making it the closest thing to a Washington State Ferries walk-on I’ve found anywhere in Europe. The 15-minute trip across the Gulf of Finland—with gulls on the rail and the historic skyline fading behind us—felt like Bainbridge, essentially, with a UNESCO sea fortress at the other end that’s been wrenched and fought over between Nordic powers like a fumble at Lumen.
Suomenlinna spreads across six islands. Built by the Swedes in 1748, and later Russian, it’s now Finnish, and still home to about 800 residents who commute on that same ferry that hundreds of tourists take year-round. We walked the ramparts, entered the eerie, labyrinthine tunnels, got chased by Northern Europe’s most territorial geese, and sailed back just before midnight, with dusk barely settling, past the SkyWheel (Finnish for ‘Great Wheel,’ maybe?). Katajanokka’s waterfront came into view on the right, low-lit and orderly and looking uncannily like Elliott Bay curated with Nordic sensibility.
Which brings me to why any of this matters to you, dear Seattleite.
A hockey November to remember
Our Seattle Kraken play the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes at Veikkaus Arena on Nov. 12 and Nov. 14, the first regular-season games in franchise history played outside North America. Each club gets a designated home game. Back in Seattle, the Thursday puck drop lands at 9 a.m. Pacific (our “home” game); Saturday’s at 10 a.m.
Kaapo Kakko, the 25-year-old winger from Turku (Finland’s sixth-largest city, two hours west of Helsinki) and the sole Finnish Kraken on the NHL roster (although the baby squid pipeline is overflowing with Finns at every position) has been imagining this one for a while.
He told NHL.com in March that he had always pictured playing at home “in front of all of my family and friends.” Kakko took bronze with Finland at the Milano Cortina Olympics in February. Carolina, meanwhile, brings forwards Sebastian Aho and Jesperi Kotkaniemi (both from towns three hours northwest of the capital).
Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke has described Seattle and Helsinki as kindred spirits, pointing out that some trace the team’s cryptid moniker to the Barents Sea, a body of water Finland could reach before the borders shifted after the Second World War.
Once you start pulling that thread, it doesn’t stop. Both cities face the sea and organize themselves around it. Both run on ferries. Their libraries are civic icons. Both drink absurd quantities of coffee against the same dark winter. Finland exports metal the way Seattle exported grunge. There is even a karaoke bar in Helsinki called Kraken, at Hietaniemenkatu 2, whose staff had no idea the hockey team was coming and were delighted to first hear it from me.
And both seatowns have phenomenal craft beer. Helsinki Bryggeri Brewhouse by the harbor is a must.
Ali Daniels, the Kraken’s senior vice president of marketing, says that roughly 250 Seattle fans are officially on board to take in the festivities, and season ticket holders got a week’s head start on the invitation before it went out to the rest of the fan base. The official Kraken Global Series partner, Ottawa-based Victory Travel & Events, had only a handful of tour packages left as of early August. The Helsinki-only tour runs Nov. 9-16, including flights from Seattle and six nights downtown. The Premium Plus version adds three nights in Stockholm and an overnight Silja Line crossing from Stockholm to Helsinki. Both packages include tickets to both games, a guided city tour and a Finnish-themed event with Kraken players. The NHL, meanwhile, is running a multi-day Fan Fest in Helsinki that’s open to everyone.
For those staying home, the team is planning morning watch parties. “We’re excited to create the connection through watch parties here to ensure all of our fans have a chance to enjoy the Global Series games,” says Daniels, pointing fans to the team’s social channels as the plans firm up.
The Helsinki arena has its own comeback story
Veikkaus Arena is a hockey nerd treasure trove. Finland’s largest arena opened in Pasila in 1997 as Hartwall Areena and went dark in March 2022 when EU sanctions hit its Russian owners. It sat empty for three and a half years, the holding company unable to pay the heating bills, until a Finnish real estate investment firm bought the arena and Live Nation signed a 20-year deal to run the building. It reopened in October 2025. Jokerit, the club that fled the KHL in 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and clawed its way back through the second tier, won promotion to Liiga and this season plays its first full campaign in the building since the sanctions closed it.
If you want the older, scrappier version of Helsinki hockey, take tram 2, 3 or 7 to Nordis. The Helsinki Ice Hall in Töölö opened in 1966, seats 8,200, and belongs to HIFK, whose derby against Jokerit was for decades the fiercest in the Nordics. Liiga is rated Europe’s second-strongest league by the IIHF.
The Nordic hockey gods have smiled upon Kraken fans, because HIFK hosts Jokerit at Nordis arena on Nov. 11, at 6:30 p.m., the night before the Kraken take the ice at Veikkaus Arena. It’s the first time these two meet at Nordis in Liiga play since Jokerit came back, in a barn that seats fewer people than Everett’s Angel of the Winds, and the noise will tell you everything about why the NHL couldn’t wait to get back to the Finnish (and Nordic hockey) capital.
Where to sleep, eat and sip
Stay
The Waldorf Astoria Helsinki opened in October 2025, with in-room saunas in the larger suites. Solo Sokos Hotel Pier 4 arrived on Katajanokka in 2024: 164 timber-lined rooms, a rooftop bar called Humu, and the SkyWheel practically at the door. Book early. Slush, the 13,000-person startup conference, runs Nov. 18-19 and clears out the city’s hotel stock.
Dine
Time Out Helsinki’s 2026 list crowned Plein in Vallila, where four courses run €58. The Alley in Kallio placed second, fermentation-driven Boreal third and earned a Michelin star this year. My local favorite is Ravintola Salve at Hietalahdenranta 5 C, just west of the main harbor.
Drink
Helsinki Bryggeri Brewhouse brews on site just up from Kauppatori, the Market Square, and has a dozen memorable local gems, including a strong IPA game.
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