Sweden produces some of the world’s best hockey players but there was a time where it was believed that Scandinavians could not cut the mustard in North America.  Ulf Nilsson helped changed that perception.

Before we begin, here are two interesting (at least we think so) trivia facts about Ivan Boldirev:

The first is that he is the all-time leading scorer who was born in Yugoslavia.  Now, considering that the other three players with that distinction have a combined seven, and that Yugoslavia is no longer a country, we feel confident in anointing this national record that will never be broken.

They say in baseball that you still have to be a good player if you lose 20 Games because that means that they have the confidence in you to go out there, and it is unspoken between the player and coach that the team around him just wasn’t that good.  There is something similar in hockey, as you can argue that Gilles Meloche was a really good netminder, and even though he is fourth all-time in Losses (351) and lost 81 more Games than he won, this was a veteran of 788 Games, and any Goalie who played that many games had to be good.

A member of the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, Scott Young quietly scored 756 Points over his 1,181-game career in the National Hockey League.  Young played for six NHL teams, had four 60 Point seasons, and was a role player on two Stanley Cup Championship teams, one with Pittsburgh (1991) and one with Colorado (1996).