Puckarinen Hits A Post
We are the champions
by Puckarinen on 04/23/12 at 01:05 PM ET
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On May 20, in some European capital*, people will be storming the streets, bathing in the city’s fountains, and dressing up statues with their national team hockey sweaters. They’ll be driving up and down the streets, honking their horns, with their flags sticking out of the car windows, waving in the wind. People will be singing national anthems in unison, and they will be screaming the names of their hockey heroes to nobody in particular.
That’s what winning the hockey World Championship does to people.
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Tags: Finland, Henrik+Zetterberg, Mikko+Koivu, Nicklas+Lidstrom, Saku+Koivu, Sweden, Teemu+Selanne, Valtteri+Filppula, Worlds,
Time to believe
by Puckarinen on 04/10/12 at 10:55 AM ET
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Last week, when I saw the YouTube video of Scott Hartnell making his then-famous now-forgotten - nothing personal, Scottie, that’s just the way things go these days - Hulk Hogan impersonation, I thought of a friend of mine who did the same thing 15 years ago.
Only, he wasn’t doing it in front of 15 000 people, or to a guy dressed up as Hulk Hogan. He did it in an ice cold hockey rink 50 kilometers west of Helsinki, Finland, in front of 200 people, and purely out of frustration and to get back at every single one of those 150 people in the stands.
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Tags: Herb+Brooks, Mark+Messier, miracles, playoffs, Scott+Hartnell,
They used to be kings
by Puckarinen on 03/27/12 at 09:09 AM ET
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“You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying in sweat.”
– “Lydia Grant”, dance instructor in “Fame”
Yes, I’m old enough to not only admit to remembering “Fame”, the 1980s hit TV series, but also having liked the show. Now, rushing home on Sunday afternoons so I could watch Danny and Bruno and Leroy, and of course Valerie, Coco and Lori work on their art, and get their lives straight, wasn’t something I told my teammates, but then again, since nobody talked about it, maybe I wasn’t the only fan of the show. All I know, “Fame” was never discussed in the locker room.
I’ve quoted “Lydia Grant’s” - played by Debbie Allen - words many times over the years, sometimes jokingly, but most often seriously, because it’s true. Fame does cost, and the price is sweat.
In September, at the Swedish Elitserien’s annual kick off event, most of the experts, including Elitserien coaches, predicted Djurgården to finish at the top of the standings, a couple of the coaches even going as far as predicting the Stockholm team to win the championship, and add to their already massive collection of titles.
Djurgården refers to itself as the team with the most Swedish championships, “Mesta mästare”, which is naturally true. Their 16 Swedish titles is four more than Brynäs has, and nine more than AIK, their local rival has won.
All three clubs are still playing hockey this season, which, it being spring in Stockholm is usually good news, but in Djurgården’s case, it’s not.
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Teemu and Saku
by Puckarinen on 03/13/12 at 11:21 AM ET
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They’re actually almost the same age. Sure, Teemu’s four years older, but what’s four years when you’re 41 and 37? And yet, somehow Saku still seems like the kid, next to a veteran, even though they’re both veterans.
Last night the two veterans, two Finns united in Anaheim, both had their own historic night when Selänne - surely you knew Teemu was Selänne, and Saku was Koivu - scored his 22nd goal of the season, and 1399th point of his career, and grabbed the 19th place on the NHL’s all-time scoring list all to himself, leaving his idol and friend Jari Kurri behind him.
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Tags: Jari+Kurri, Saku+Koivu, Teemu+Selanne,
Under pressure
by Puckarinen on 02/24/12 at 12:15 PM ET
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Pressure – pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure - that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
– Queen, “Under pressure”
Playoff race is on, and for many teams, that means that the pressure, too, is on. But going for a playoff spot and missing it, while sure a disappointing experience, is nothing compared to the pressure that a team trying to avoid relegation feels.
Even with the pressure, a missed playoff spot is just a missed opportunity to get to the throne. Life goes on.
A relegation form the top division, on the other hand, is the end, a complete dismissal from the court, a disaster on all levels.
That’s why Stockholm’s Djurgården (and its fans) are starting to feel the panic. Even the thought of playing for their spot in the Elitserien is frightening, even if there’s still a good chance that they will finish in the top 2 of the double round-robin against the best teams in the second division, and play in the Elitserien next season as well.
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Tags: Djurgården, Elitserien, Kvalserien,
National treasures
by Puckarinen on 02/16/12 at 10:59 AM ET
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On May 7, 1995, Ville Peltonen, the son of a Finnish national team player Esa, had a big dream come true. Anyone who’s ever played road hockey has also dreamed about scoring that Stanley Cup winning goal, or becoming a new Paul Henderson (or his equivalent in your country) by scoring a big goal for the national team.
Some of us take it a step further, and dream of scoring a hat trick.
And for some, the dreams do come true, because that’s exactly what Peltonen, then 21, did. He scored a hat trick in the 1995 World Championship final, as Finland beat Sweden 4-1. What made his hat trick a once-in-a-lifetime moment was the fact that that had also been a million other people’s dream, and for a good portion of Finns, an impossible dream.
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Tags: Mikael+Granlund, Team+Finland, Ville+Peltonen, Worlds,
Finland’s classic winters
by Puckarinen on 02/07/12 at 09:30 AM ET
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And that was the second Finnish Winter Classic. A real Helsinki derby, with the reds, IFK, taking on the whites, Jokerit, in front of 35 000 people in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. The home team, IFK, won the game in a shootout, 3-2. And you know there’s magic in the air when the nicest play of the game is Jarkko Ruutu’s forehand-backhand deke in the shootout.
Last year, the home team - then Jokerit - lost the game so IFK is now 2-0 in their outdoor games in the SM-liiga.
While the February 2011 derby was the first outdoor game in the Finnish league history, it wasn’t that long ago the Finnish top teams still battled for points while battling against snow and freezing cold. The league was founded in 1975, as an entity divorced from the federation.
Back then, the first indoor arena in the country was just ten years old. In the early 1970s, several of the rinks were converted into arenas, and surprisingly many are still - after renovations - home arenas to Finnish league teams.
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Tags: Finland, Hannu+Kapanen, Jarkko+Ruutu,
Smoke on the water
by Puckarinen on 01/26/12 at 10:20 AM ET
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When I was 17, many moons ago, I lived in a small Finnish town called Joensuu, in the eastern part of the country, about an hour from the Russian border. Except that it wasn’t the Russian border, it was the Soviet border, and it wasn’t such a big of a deal. There’s nothing on the other side of the border, anyway, just forest. There’s nothing else in about a hundred mile radius from the city.
There was no Internet, and therefore no YouTube, but there was rock’n’roll so my friends and I spent a lot of time sitting in each others’ rooms listening to tapes and records, and swapping tapes and records with each other.
And trying to learn those first few chords to Smoke on the Water.
(As it happens, still the only chords I know).
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Tags: Deep+Purple, Finland, Joensuu, Jozef+Stumpel, Sweden,
Chance and circumstance
by Puckarinen on 01/10/12 at 09:10 AM ET
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Last week in Sweden, some 600 000 people stayed up or got up in the middle of the night to watch the World Juniors final between Sweden and Russia on TV. The average was 530 000 and by the time Mika Zibanejad beat Andrei Makarov in the Russian net, 600 000 people had tuned in.
And the way the game ended, it was obviously worth losing some sleep.
After the game, Sweden’s Jeremy Boyce-Rotevall said that Zibanejad had told him before the game that he’d “finish this game off.’’ A bold prediction coming from a player who had scored just three goals in the tournament, against Latvia and Slovakia – but he backed it up.
“I [repeated it to Boyce-Rotevall] before the overtime too so it was good to get that goal,’’ Zibanejad said. “You have to decide if you want to win this. In the morning, it was a joke, but obviously it’s not a joke anymore.”
No, it’s no joke. And every time we repeat it, it becomes a little more of a truth until it becomes a true legend.
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Tags: Herb+Brooks, Jeremy+Boyce-Rotevall, Mika+Zibanejad, Mike+Eruzione, Miracle, Phil+Verchota, Pontus+Åberg, Ralph+Cox, World+Juniors,
The Christmas miracle
by Puckarinen on 12/24/11 at 12:05 PM ET
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A part of hockey’s lure has to be in the equipment. There’s something magical in the ritual of putting on all that gear that looks nothing like anything in the real world.
When I was four years old, following my father to hockey games in Helsinki, I was fascinated by goalies who, to me, looked like freaks of nature. I mean, where did these people live? I had never seen such creatures - with their wide legs, their chubby upper bodies, and their big, blocky hands - out on the streets.
Then one time, I asked my father about it and was surprised to hear that the players wore equipment only on the ice.
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Tags: Holidays,
About Puckarinen Hits A Post
Risto Pakarinen is a Finnish freelance writer, based in Stockholm, Sweden.
That’s right, he’s deep behind the enemy lines. He’s also a regular contributor to IIHF.com, NHL.com, The Hockey News, and several publications in Finland and Sweden. He’s also covered four World Championships and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics for the IIHF.
And since he foolishly hoisted the Stanley Cup in his twenties, he wakes up every morning knowing he will never be able to win it.
