Feb 02, 2010 by RistoP |
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Last weekend, I was in Minsk, Belarus, to see the Russian KHL’s All-Star Game. After the game, I was standing in the mixed zone, listening to former NHLer Ville Peltonen, also a Finnish national hero thanks to his hat trick in a World Championship final against Sweden in 1995, when some fans showed up.
They said, “pleez, pleez” and gave Peltonen some small flags, posters, and a pen. He said, “sure,” and signed a half a dozen autographs, and posed for a few photos.
(Some of my colleagues thought it was such a no-no that the KHL should be fined, but my story’s not going there).
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Jan 21, 2010 by RistoP |
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Elitserien |
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JÖNKÖPING, Sweden – A beard is a funny thing. We’ve all seen all kinds of playoff beards over the years, from a few hairs to a full-facial hair masks, à la Henrik Zetterberg.
A beard also changes the way a person looks and by the time any playoff season comes to the final series, the players have transformed. It takes time, so the difference is most obvious only the day after, or a few days after the last final, when the players show up to a parade all clean-shaven.
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Jan 09, 2010 by RistoP |
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All-time record seals Janne Ojanen’s place in Finnish hockey history.
TAMPERE – All-time records can be double-edged swords. On one hand, they are the true testament to the player’s impact to the sport, and a proof of excellence over a long period of time. On the other, they also often get dismissed because the player in question, the one breaking the record, is almost without exception not the same player as he was in his prime. (Martin Brodeur may be an exception.)
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Dec 30, 2009 by RistoP |
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Sixteen years ago, Team Finland entered the Olympic tournament with anticipation. It had finished seventh, after it beat France in the game for 7th place, a disappointment for a country that had won its first Olympic medal in Calgary, four years earlier.
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Dec 28, 2009 by RistoP |
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One from
the archives:
The first Winter Classic between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins was such a great success, and such a marketing kick for the sport, that it’s no wonder there will be a sequel to that. And this time there’s reason to believe that the sequel might even out-do the original.
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Dec 13, 2009 by RistoP |
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Dear Hannes,
Last night after you’d fallen asleep, I had one of my hockey games again. We lost, which is never fun, but I scored a goal which is always fun, so all in all, it was more fun than not.
Skating is so much fun. When I was eight or nine, a little older than you now, I used to dream that it’d get so cold in Helsinki that all the streets would freeze over and I could skate to school. Skating was so much more fun that walking, or running. (For some reason, inlines don't do it for me).
But I did have to to walk to school and back. If I didn't walk with my best friend, I was always kicking pieces of snow and ice, and after school I’d play ball.
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Dec 12, 2009 by RistoP |
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HELSINKI – This is exactly the way it wasn’t supposed to be. Jokerit Helsinki had announced that, having had first Doug Shedden and then Glen Hanlon behind the bench, and a string of failed imports on the roster – and several superstars, like Glen Metropolit, and Tim Thomas – this season, they would be an all-Finnish team.
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Nov 20, 2009 by RistoP |
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MOSCOW – In 2008, Linköpings HC shocked its fans when it announced that it had rented its three star players, Magnus Johansson, Tony Mårtensson, and Mattias Weinhandl, to the KHL. Johansson went to Atlant Mytishchi, Mårtensson to Ak Bars Kazan, and Weinhandl to Dynamo Moscow.
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Nov 17, 2009 by RistoP |
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ÖRNSKÖLDSVIK, Sweden – Peter Forsberg has crashed a few nets in his time, but on Monday, he - together with a lifelong buddy, Markus Näslund - crashed the Modo Hockey web server when it was announced that both of them would return to the team this season.
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Nov 16, 2009 by RistoP |
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Nov 11, 2009 by RistoP |
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HELSINKI – All the Finns really ever wanted was a medal. The country had made its debut in the international stage at the 1939 World Championship in Basel, Switzerland, finished 13th, and then went to war. The real kind.
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Nov 10, 2009 by RistoP |
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Nov 10, 2009 by RistoP |
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Puckarinen's hockey news from a parallel universe.
Nov 06, 2009 by RistoP |
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Russ Cohen reports from the other side of the Atlantic. He's been to the chocolate town, and has seen the future of Milk Duds. And so much more.
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Nov 06, 2009 by RistoP |
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Fall break! Wooohooo!! Well, the national team breaks that bring the European leagues to a halt a couple of times a season aren’t exactly the time to hop on a plane to Florida. They’re there to give the top nations a chance to play their friendly games in markets where the national teams sell, and sell well.
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Nov 02, 2009 by RistoP |
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Introducing a new segment on Puckarinen where Mondays are fun days.
News from another hockey world.
Oct 30, 2009 by RistoP |
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Legends |
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STOCKHOLM – We all love winners, and many books have been written about what exactly makes a winner, without a definite answer. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they come from the east and the west. They’re nice guys and they’re tough guys, and they’re forwards, defencemen and goalies.
Looking at a young player, it can be difficult to predict, or tell, who the true winners will be. They’re competitors, sure, but a lot of people compete without winning. There’s something special about the players who always seem to be able to win.
Naturally, they’re easy to spot after the fact - just look at their records - but none as easy as Mats Näslund, the former Tre Kronor and Montreal Canadiens star, who turns 50 on Saturday.
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Oct 23, 2009 by RistoP |
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Or maybe Phoenix. This just in:
The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), closely watching the financial situation of the Lada Togliatti hockey club, adopted measures aimed at supporting the team. The decision to provide financial assistance to Lada was made by KHL President Alexander Medvedev, and the KHL Board of Directors endorsed his proposal at its recent meeting on October 17, 2009.
In accordance with the decision of the KHL Board of Directors, the KHL sent funds to Lada totaling approximately 17 million rubles (USD 580,000) to assist with operating expenses for the 2009-2010 season.
It ain't easy being a superpower.
Oct 23, 2009 by RistoP |
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A few days ago, I had a nice chat with Robert Esche, the St. Petersburg SKA goalie, and we talked about living in Russia, about how he's got better as a goalie, and about the Olympics.
Enjoy:
Oct 22, 2009 by RistoP |
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It’s not every day that a
hockey player’s interview makes me cry, but that happened the other day. That’s not so hard to understand when one considers that most of the hockey player interviews are about "taking it one game at a time" and "working as a team going forward".
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Oct 20, 2009 by RistoP |
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Elitserien |
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STOCKHOLM – If there’s one word that a hockey fan dreads more than “loss”, it’s probably “rebuilding”. That’s a word that club managements like to use when things aren’t going the way they – or the fans – would want to.
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Oct 20, 2009 by RistoP |
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The week that was:
Robin Sterner, the grandson of Ulf Sterner, the first European NHL pro, played his first Elitserien game on Saturday, in Färjestad’s home arena, which has his grandfather’s number nine lifted to the rafters. The 19-year-old forward introduced himself to the home crowd in his first shift by scoring his first Elitserien goal. Sterner plays regularly in Färjestad’s farm team in Skåre in the third-tier league.
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Oct 17, 2009 by RistoP |
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I recently met Baptiste Amar, French national team defenseman, two-time French league MVP who averaged almost 26 minutes a game at the World Championships last May, fourth most in the tournament.
This season, he’s taken his A game to Sweden and Rögle where’s already in the league top-10 in plus/minus, and averages over 20 minutes a game.
We talked about how he got to Sweden, what it’s been like, and whether he gets help from the two other French guys in the league: Timrå’s Laurent Meunier, and Skellefteå's Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Enjoy.
Oct 01, 2009 by RistoP |
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On Wednesday, September 30, 2009, on the day that the NHL teams had to file their rosters, and make the final cuts, Mats Sundin announced his retirement at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. Grand Hotel is the hotel where the Nobel Prize laureats spend their time in Stockholm when they come to town to collect the award in December. That’s where the stars stay when in Stockholm. Across a small bay, there is the Royal Palace where the King of Sweden has his office.
Some 15 kilometers north of Grand Hotel, there is Edsbacka krog, one of two restaurants with two Michelin stars in Sweden. The inn is in the heart of Sollentuna, next to the Edsbergs castle, which in turn overlooks Edsviken, the Baltic Sea bay, a beautiful public park where Swedes go for picnics, and walks and runs, and, on the other side of the water, a hockey arena.
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Sep 30, 2009 by RistoP |
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Sep 28, 2009 by RistoP |
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ZURICH – While winning the Victoria Cup is important for the Chicago Blackhawks, and the NHL, for some individuals the Victoria Cup event and its two games are important on a personal level. A good showing in Zurich might be the difference between the NHL and the AHL, between Chicago and Rockford.
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Sep 25, 2009 by RistoP |
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When one door closes, another opens, goes the optimistic saying that is often offered to the ones who’ve just been hit by a slamming door. While one hockey legend cautiously closed a door to coaching the Phoenix Coyotes, another got his foot in the door towards making an NHL comeback.
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Sep 25, 2009 by RistoP |
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Guest writer Russ Cohen on what happened to Crosby's old linemate:
The LNAH is a league that I wrote about a few years ago. I accidentally ran across Guillaume Lefebvre who was drafted by the Flyers and now he was the lone scorer on a team of fighters. He said he was playing there so he could go to law school. He was saving his money. I’m not sure that was the real reason since he played for the Springfield Falcons last year amassing 206 PIMS and likely getting his last taste of pro hockey. Now Dany Roussin, who was once a star for the Rimouski Oceanic, and a one-time linemate of Sidney Crosby is heading down that same path.
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Sep 23, 2009 by RistoP |
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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. Nothing.
Gloves are so padded that when the players do the now-ubiquitous gloved hand-clap to thank the fans after a game, it looks bizarre, unnatural. Same goes for the helmet, the socks (yeah, right), and the pants.
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.
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Sep 21, 2009 by RistoP |
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Joel Lundqvist can finally begin his long way back
GOTHENBURG – The past year hasn’t been the best for Joel Lundqvist. Under contract with the Dallas Stars, he injured his shoulder blade early last season and missed 21 games from October to December. He returned to the ice in December, collected two points, then re-injured his shoulder and missed another eight games.
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