For Carleton, the trip was another step in the evolution of On the Pond, which has been part of his life for nearly 20 years.
It began around 2007 when Carleton was working as a marketing manager for Boston Pizza in Gravenhurst and came up with the idea of a pond hockey tournament to help bring business to the area during the winter.
“We had like six rinks, I think it was, and it had like 18 teams,” Carleton said.
Today, that tournament has grown to 25 rinks and 150 teams, with teams travelling from across North America.
After moving to Peterborough, Carleton brought the same philosophy to local hockey through PA Day and holiday tournaments.
“It was more geared around for every level,” he said. “The tournaments that went from house league right up to AAA. So they're in the same dressing rooms, they get to interact with each other, and the house league kids are just thinking it's awesome to sit beside a AAA kid.”
The players don't compete against one another across skill levels. Instead, the games are structured so they can share the experience while playing against appropriately matched opponents.
“They don't play against each other though,” Carleton said. “It's evened out on the ice and it's timed lines by buzzers. So they get to interact with each other and have a great time and no pressure.”
That focus on the people involved carried over to the European teams.
When it came time to select the players, Carleton said hockey ability was only part of the equation.
“What I really found, and I'm glad I did this, was it wasn't just based on skill that we took,” he said. “It was based on the player, the culture, the kind of family that we were going to spend 10 days with.”
Carleton started with a core group of players and families he already knew, then had them help build the teams by bringing in friends and relatives.
“We had kids from Ottawa that were relatives of families that went,” he said. “So everyone was interacting with each other. They're all connected and everyone was wonderful.”
The result was exactly what he had hoped for.
“I couldn't have picked better players or families for the culture,” Carleton said.
And the next opportunities are already taking shape.
On the Pond is planning a similar trip to Nashville next May, with four or five teams expected to take part. Rather than simply attending a tournament and staying in a hotel, Carleton and Marchant are building an itinerary around the entire experience.
“We decided, Tiffany and I decided to put together an itinerary almost the same as Finland that no one's ever done,” Carleton said. “So everything's included. We have stuff going on every single day there.”
The Nashville trip will include NCAA players as tour guides, along with help from one of Carleton's former university teammates, who now works with the Nashville Predators and is heavily involved in youth hockey.
There are also plans for another U18 team and a 2014 team to head to Europe next year, with recruiting already underway.
For the families who made the trip to Finland and Sweden, the experience has already left them looking forward to what comes next.
And for Carleton, it is a pretty remarkable evolution from where On the Pond began nearly two decades ago.
What started with a pond hockey tournament has grown into local tournaments, international travel and opportunities for young players and their families to experience hockey in places they may never have otherwise visited.
Now, with Nashville on the horizon and another European trip being planned, the work continues to create those experiences for more local hockey families.
