The Senators are returning to Stockholm next season for the 2023 NHL Global Series - Sweden. They'll be joined there by the Detroit Red Wings, Minnesota Wild, and Toronto Maple Leafs, with each team playing two regular-season games in Stockholm.

Oddly, the Senators won't play the Leafs – their biggest rival – but they will face the Red Wings on Thursday, Nov. 16 and then take on Filip Gustavsson and the Minnesota Wild on Saturday, Nov. 18. All games will be played at Avicii Arena, named in honour of the late Swedish DJ, Avicii, who died in 2018.

The last time the Senators played games in Sweden in that very same arena, was November of 2017. At the time, the Sens had just come off a long playoff run, coming within one goal of the Cup final. They had just acquired Matt Duchene and started that season 8-3-5, including a two game sweep of Colorado in Stockholm. But when they returned to North America, their fall from grace was almost biblical.

In their next 13 games they went 1-10-2. They finished second last overall in the league, and within a year of that trip, the Sens also had to deal with the Hoffman-Karlsson feud, and the secretly recorded Uber ride conversation where players were ripping their coaches. There was a lot of stuff, on and off the ice, that ultimately led to their decision to do a full rebuild. 

Can a cross-ocean road trip early in a season be blamed for all that? Of course not. But it's not ideal for the Sens, who've just blown up three seasons in a row with terrible starts, having to go on a early season, overseas road trip that knocks them so far out of normal routines. And it's especially odd to be going back to ground zero, where they began to dig the hole they're still trying to get out. 

But perhaps there's symmetry in returning, finally closing the circle on bleak period for the franchise.