"Det är snabba puckar," your boss in Sweden might announce if she wants to her team to pick up the pace and work with a bit more urgency, say to meet a deadline or a sudden new requirement. 

Puckar refers to "pucks", the plastic discs used in place of the ball in ice hockey, the sport Swedes are most passionate about.  

When a boss uses the phrase snabba puckar, they are imagining themselves as an ice hockey coach trying to motivate a team to shift into a higher gear to win a match. There's a sense of rapid action, the puck zipping back and forth as the team completes their mission at dizzying speed. Finally, the reference to ice hockey makes it a light-hearted and informal way of speaking, a bit like the phrase "action stations" might be in English. 

It's not just your boss: a parent or teacher might announce that it is snabba puckar if a child has to get ready to catch a bus or leave to go to school. 

It is most often used as way of encouraging faster action, but can also be used to describe something that has already happened, when it expressed relief, or perhaps surprise at how quickly something had taken place.

So as you collapse into your seats after you've had to rush home to collect a forgotten passport and then race through customs and passport control, your Swedish wife might exhale: Det var snabba puckar. "That was fast pucks". 

If you're a police officer and the raid of a suspect's house and arrest of the suspect is over in five minutes, when you expected it to take 20, you might use the expression to express your surprise.

It's perhaps a reflection of the important place of ice hockey in Swedish life that Snabba puckar is not the only puck expression. There's also: 

Raka puckar or "straight pucks": this means to speak honestly and directly without beating around the bush or sugarcoating a difficult message. 

Korta puckar or short pucks: this means that something has to be completed or solved in a very short time. It's more focused on the deadline, where as snabba puckar is more focused on the action that needs to be taken. 

Lugna puckar or "calm pucks": this means that everything is under control, there's nothing to worry about, and the imagined team can take it relatively easily. 

**Examples: **

Vi har bråttom, nu är det snabba puckar – "we are in a hurry, it's action stations!"

Det är snabba puckar som gäller, kampanjen går ut om tre dagar – "Time is of the essence, as the campaign ends in three days". 

Vår verksamhet kännetecknas av väldigt snabba puckar och utredningar som dras igång med kort varsel – "Our operation is characterised by an extremely high tempo and investigations that are launched at short notice