SSH can be used as a sort of "poor man's VPN". For example, you want to get into IRC with your local client (mIRC, Weechat, etc), but your local network blocks IRC ports.
However! Your local network will almost always allow SSH (sysadmins need this for most day to day work). You can connect to tilde.team, and use port forwarding to get on.
What that SSH command did was open a local port tunnel (-L), using local port 6667 (6667:) pointed at localhost (From the remote's point of view), on remote port 6667 (Default IRC port).
Putty has the same ability (For Windows and Mac users), under Connection --> SSH --> Tunnels.
What if you don't want to edit files on the team server, but instead, you want to create it on your local machine? You don't want to have to copy/paste or re-type all of that, right?
The above executes the ping command from the server side of the house. The one thing you need to be careful of here are quotes and input redirection. It can have surprising affects, mixing remote and local pipes.