Puckarinen

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:

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.

Here's a short clip of my chat with Doug Shedden, head coach of EV Zug in the Swiss National League A. (Apologies for the quality of the audio).



After this, the Kloten Flyers rolled over Zug in four straight games.

The ZSC Lions Zurich became of the first champions of the champions, claiming the Champions Hockey League title by beating metallurg Magnitogorsk 5-0 on Wednesday. Afterwards, I ducked the champagne and sat down briefly with Ryan Gardner.


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I had a nice chat with Adrian Wichser, the Champions Hockey League leading scorer from Zurich. He's got 1+11=12 points in seven games, and as the numbers suggest, he's quite the set up guy.


The team is now getting ready for Wednesday's Champions Hockey League final in Rapperswil, Switzerland. During our chat, Adrian also told me what his favorite assist in the CHL has been. See it after the jump.


Cont.

It’s not you, Ovie, it’s me. Really. You’re a fine, no, amazing, wonderful player, and a really knee-slapping funny guy, but somehow, in some strange way, I just don’t feel it.

Keep reading, or listen to the audio version here:



Cont.

And now, reading his latest column, here's Puckarinen.



Text below.


Cont.

The first Champions Hockey League semifinals were played last night. After ZSC Lions rolled over Espoo Blues, I had a little chat with Blues's Ryan Keller, who led the Finnish SM-liiga in scoring a week ago.

On Wednesday, the ZSC Lions and Slavia Prague battle it out in Prague, for the fourth and last semifinal spot in the Champions Hockey League. I chatted with the Lions' coach Sean Simpson a few weeks ago in Linköping.

I got a couple of minutes with Peter Sejna, the 2003 Hobey Baker Award winner, as the best US college player after his ZSC Lions had beat Linköpings HC 7-2, in Linköping.