Puckarinen

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.

First, in Helsinki, Finland hosts the Karjala Cup, named so after a beer sponsor, in the second leg of the Euro Hockey Tour. Russia, Sweden, Finland, and the Czech Republic set up Euro Hockey Tour in 1997, to create a recurring tournament for the top European hockey nations. Each country host’s one tournament, and the one with the most overall points, wins the honor and some prize money.

Each tournament is a great opportunity for the host nation to generate some revenue, and to market its national team - and naturally, test some players in tough games to see if they can cut in the World Championship.

(Meanwhile, Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia, and Team USA play in Deutschland Cup).

This year, Karjala Cup is considered especially important as a last chance for the European-based players to convince their coaches and earn a ticket to a hockey tournament played in Vancouver in February. And the rosters are pretty much as good as they can get on this side of the Atlantic.

Finland brings back veteran forward Ville Peltonen, as the team captain, now playing with Minsk Dinamo in the KHL. Peltonen will play in line with Ak Bars Kazan’s Janne Pesonen - who last year scored 82 points in 70 games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins - and Pesonen’s teammate Niko Kapanen, who last May led Team Finland in scoring at the World Championship in Switzerland, with 10 points in 7 games. The third Finnish Ak Bars Kazan forward, Jarkko Immonen, will also play in Karjala Cup.

In defence, the hosts have Ossi Vaananen, also in Dinamo Minsk this season, and Lasse Kukkonen (Avangard Omsk, KHL).

The Czechs are led by Jiri Hudler, and Jaroslav Bednar, who’s restarted his career, and is at 32 - he turns 33 the day after the Karjala Cup ends - maybe better than ever. Eight of the players on the Czech team play in the KHL this season.

With Team Sweden, all eyes are on one guy, and one guy only. Peter Forsberg is making his umpteenth comeback, and, like Michael Jackson, Forsberg says, “this is it.” If the hockey world’s most famous foot holds, Forsberg will resume his career .. somewhere. If not, he’ll pack it in.

But, Sweden, too, has a veteran-laden team in the tournament. The average age of the team is 30, the oldest player being defenseman Marcus Ragnarsson who, upon returning from the NHL, played several seasons in the second-tier league in Sweden, before making an Elitserien comeback last season. The youngest defenseman is the 29-year-old Christian Backman, who failed to convince the Florida Panthers during his tryout this fall.

Besides Forsberg, KHL’s leading scorer Mattias Weinhandl, and former Bruin Per-Johan Axelsson as well as Weinhandl’s teammate in the KHL, Linus Omark, hope to play themselves into the Olympic team.

Russia? Alexander Radulov, Oleg Saprykin, Dmitri Kalinin, and the gang are always favorites to win, and a few of the 2009 World Champions will make the Olympic team as well.

For the Olympic wishfuls, it’s showtime!