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A few months ago, Blackhawks forward Dennis Rasmussen was out to dinner with teammates Artem Anisimov, Artemi Panarin, Marian Hossa and Richard Panik.

Anisimov and Panarin are native Russians. Hossa and Panik are from Slovakia. At one point during the evening, those four began having separate conversations in their native languages. It left Rasmussen, who is from Sweden, sitting there clueless.

“I thought I was at the wrong table,” Rasmussen said. “They were laughing at me too because I was just quiet the whole dinner.”

Walk around the Hawks dressing room and you might hear conversations in Swedish, Russian, Czech, Slovakian and English. You also might hear conversations bounce from one language to another. It’s like that in every NHL locker room.

That makes playing for a hockey team unlike almost any other workplace.

Many Hawks players talk to each other in multiple languages — and sometimes they do so to gain a strategic advantage on an opponent.

“You just need to think fast on the bench and talk fast with what you want to say and just say it — whatever language it is,” Anisimov said.

During the World Cup of Hockey in September, defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson played for Team Sweden. Everybody spoke Swedish, so speaking English wasn’t required. But he caught himself sometimes talking to teammates on the ice in English.

“Sometimes it’s in the backbone to scream in English too. It goes both ways sometimes,” Hjalmarsson said. “It’s much more natural now to scream in English. This is my 10th year now so it’s pretty deep in my brain.”

Hjalmarsson and other Hawks who speak different languages said they are sometimes able to use the difference in language to their advantage. For instance, if Hjalmarsson is involved in a faceoff with Marcus Kruger or Rasmussen, and they notice that nobody on the other team is Swedish, they will communicate with each other in Swedish.

“It’s a huge advantage for Swedish players and Russian players,” said Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov, who is Russian.

The same applies to Czechs and Slovaks.

Anisimov has been linemates with Panarin since the two came to the Hawks before the start of last season. Panarin didn’t know much English upon arrival, and though he has learned some over the last year and a half, Anisimov still communicates with him in Russian, especially on faceoffs.

“You just look on the ice who you’re against and you just go from there,” Anisimov said. “You can say ‘Go this way,’ or ‘I’m going to try and win it to your side’ or ‘It’s going to be tight and you need to come and pick up the puck.’ Those kind of things.

“It’s a little thing but a hockey game is all little things.”

Anisimov and Panarin’s other linemate, Patrick Kane, still hasn’t quite picked up what they’re saying.

“Sometimes I’m caught in between there on the bench, too,” Kane said. “Those guys are speaking back and forth in Russian, I just have to kind of move on the bench to get out of the way. I think if we’re doing a faceoff or something, usually, I sometimes, it might be I communicate with Anisimov in English and he might have to talk to Panarin in Russian. That’s the way it works out sometimes.”

The Russians’ arrivals with the Hawks in the 2015-16 season meant some of the Eastern Europeans on the team had to dust off as much Russian as they could remember. Hossa said he studied a Russian for about “a half a year” in school before switching to English when he was young. Defenseman Michal Rozsival, who is from the Czech Republic, said it was mandatory to study Russian when he was growing up.

“I try to see what I remember, if I can actually talk to them and get my point across, but it’s not much. Mostly it’s just English,” Rozsival said.

The Czechs and Slovaks can communicate easily with each other because “it’s almost the same language,” according to Hossa, but Russian has fewer similarities, although it has just enough for them to get by with Panarin and Anisimov.

“When the game is going the right way I know a few words in Russian so I throw it out there sometimes and they have a good laugh,” Hossa said. “But most of the time it’s in English.”

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Communication is varied when the Hawks are on the bench. Typically who is sitting where dictates what language the players speak. If, for instance, Hjalmarsson and Rasmussen are sitting next to each other, they will communicate in Swedish. But if there are people between them on the bench and they want to speak with each other, they will talk in English.

“You speak English to make sure everyone understands what you’re talking about and they don’t think you’re talking (expletive) about them,” Hjalmarsson said. “You just don’t want to be rude and not make the other guys understand what you’re talking about.”

Among the Hawks’ roster there are five different primary languages spoken by over 20 players. English is the universal language, but it’s not always easy for newcomers to pick up, like Panarin and Czech defenseman Michal Kempny, both of whom do not conduct media interviews in English.

But when it comes to communicating with their teammates, they find a way. Kempny, who often played with Brent Seabrook during the season, joked Seabrook “didn’t want to learn” any Czech words and so had to find a way to communicate with him while Kane said he and Panarin had improved their communication over the last two seasons.

“His English is pretty good — probably more than he’d ever let on to you guys,” Kane said. “But I think it’s pretty easy to communicate with him. If there’s something you don’t understand, you might take a second or two to explain it out, maybe with hand motions.

“You figure it out. It’s pretty easy. I almost find I’m talking in English in a Russian accent for him to better understand me sometimes.”

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Twitter @ChristopherHine