This is a few years old picture of Hovet, Stockholm. Our hockey arena.
A few hours ago the love of my life, Djurgårdens IF, was playing the 20th game of this season. As usual I was nervous but also excited, we were finally winning again. Would we keep winning and leave the second last place in the table?
After an interesting pre-season we won the opener game of our season in the Swedish Hockey League with 5-2 away against Leksands IF who had qualified for SHL again after 1 year in HockeyAllsvenskan, the second division of Swedish Ice Hockey.
But then something happened, we started losing. In 13 games we only took 8 out of 39 points possible, nothing worked at all.
Meanwhile the football team was playing their last games of the season in Allsvenskan (the top tier league of Swedish football), the season was a complete failure. We were supposed to be in the top this year. Instead we had to kick our coach after 16 games. A British coach came in, Mark Dempsey, a lovely man from Manchester. But we were still in the bottom, if nothing drastic were going to happen we wouldn't be playing in Allsvenskan next year.
A picture of the away stand in the away premiere against Örebro. The season started well and we won with 2-0.
Next up was the home premiere, the first home game of Allsvenskan 2016. SofiaTifo fixed an amazing tifo celebrating Djurgårdens IF's 125-year anniversary.
A few days later we had another away game against Gefle, after 49 minutes Gefle scores. Thirty minutes later we tie it up, 1-1.
Two minutes injury time, still 1-1 on the scoreboard. Gefle is having pressure towards our goalie, I saw all players in Gefle moving up.
I told my friends "look now, we're going to score. They're pushing too hard!", a few seconds we get the ball and they start running. Our captain has the ball and he scores, just a few seconds before the ref blows the whistle.
INSANE happiness at the away stand, with this kind of game we would be top 3 easily. Everything was working.
But then in the next game, we had a derby versus Hammarby IF, our 2nd biggest rival. We hadn't won a derby in 5(!) years.
SofiaTifo made a very beautiful tifo once again. "Win, Djurgår'n, win.
We didn't win this time either, sure that sucked but hey, we were in the top and we'll get them next time.
No, we didn't stay in the top for long. We started losing more and more.
How was this possible? What happened?
I think we won one or two games after that, until Mark Dempsey came in and rescued us. It wasn't all his work, we also got Andreas Isaksson (The goaltender of Swedens national team for almost 15 years) and several more players.
The season went from happiness, joy and success to misery, depression and anxiety and ended with a neutral feeling after winning the last 3 games, we started the season with 3 wins in a row and we ended it the same way. This gave us a thirst for blood just waiting for Allsvenskan 2017, we'll get them next season for sure. I mean, there are rumours about Kim Källström coming to DIF, who could stop us then?
With Kim Källström and Andreas Isaksson, we're going to celebrate winning the league once again.
Back to the hockey team, after the football season ended the hockey started again. We were up against the defending champions, Frölunda. I thought we would lose big but no, something's changed with Djurgården Hockey. We've played 7 games after the 2 week break and we've won 5 out of 7. Two games went to penalty shots but we won, we're climbing the table and we might actually reach the play-offs for the third year in a row after qualifying to SHL again.
The story about our years in HockeyAllsvenskan is a story for another time, it's a very good story. I hope you appreciate this story, if so comment and I will tell you the story about when Djurgården lost their spot in SHL for the first time in 35 years and the bumpy road back with the insane celebration.
I will give you a picture of 2016's "Järnkaminernas Dag". Järnkaminerna is our supporter group and there's one game per year which is dedicated to Järnkaminerna.
