Last week, I shared an elevator with a Russian man who was wearing a pink pullover and pink pants. We shared the elevator going down and I went to see if I couldn't find a place where I could buy chips and a Coke, he to see if he couldn't own the dance floor at the Piano Bar in the lobby.

He was successful. I wasn't.

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Finnish goaltender Antti Niemi is one of the big stories in this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs. I wrote a piece about him for The Hockey News June 7 issue:

"One day, my father called me to tell me he had been at the local rink to see a junior game and had seen a goalie that impressed him," said Markus Lehto, Niemi's Helsinki-based European agent. "My father is no super scout, but he used to be the CEO of another rink and a team manager with Jokerit, so he knows his hockey."
Still, when his father mentioned "Antti Niemi," Lehto thought his dad was kidding. The only Antti Niemi he knew was the Finnish national soccer team's goalkeeper. But Lehto made a note and went to see the kid.

Read the story here (pdf, 3.1MB).

Of all the superpowers, invisibility is my favorite. I used to love the 1970s show, The Invisible Man. There’s a Finnish children’s book I adored in which the protagonist eats some invisibility powder and walks through walls. I was a fan of another 1970s show the name of which escapes me, but in which the star, named “nobody”, would tug on his scarf, and turn invisible.

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I admit it, I missed the memo on fist bumps. I guess I was still pretty much on the map when the secret handshakes were around, although the one me and Terry had in 1985 wasn’t ever used. It had three different stages, ending in a finger hook. Maybe even a pointing gesture. But it was never used in a real-life situation.

Nobody’s doing the secret handshakes anymore. It’s all fist bumps. I’m not saying that I don’t like it, because I kind of do. I get the bonding, and in some way, I like most hand gestures: the peace sign, the thumbs up, high-five, and the like.

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Seeing the silver man, the Roman soldier, the clown, and the human water fountain do their tricks - or in silver man's and Roman soldier's case, doing absolutely nothing - on the square outside the Cologne Cathedral made me think what I always think when I see street artists.

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The sports camp is about to end. We’ve had a week of fun, a week of cracking jokes in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping, and getting ready for the sports activities we’ll be doing the next day. It’s always the same guys, too, with the same jokes, but they’re kind of funny, and I’m the new kid anyway, so I’ll just lie on my mattress and listen. And giggle.

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Well, yeah, I guess I can do anything.

It's playoff time and those not playing anymore just have to hit the links.

» Finland Squeaks by Germany

» Nummelin In a One-Man Club

» Born To Be a Goalie

» Russia Starts Road to Gold

» The Little (Red) Engine That Can

» Danish Shock Therapy

Well, maybe not faces, but names that make me think of familiar faces. In Germany, everybody is Anders.

I went through high school in a city with a population of about 50 000. Not a huge city, in other words, but still a major town in Finland, well-known and all.

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COLOGNE – The hotel room is nice. Small, but nice, and the view over the Cologne cathedral to the left, and the hockey arena to the right keeps him focused.

“They’re my two cathedrals,” says Risto Pakarinen, a Finnish hockey reporter, in Cologne to cover the 2010 IIHF World Championship.

To the uninitiated, that means the hockey world championships.

Um, ice hockey.

Starting tomorrow, Mr. Pakarinen and his three IIHF.com writer and two photographer colleagues will cover all 56 games, ending in the final that will be played on May 23. By then, Mr. Pakarinen will have used every piece of clothing in his suitcase.

“Probably, yes. But most of it just once,” he says, sitting in an armchair, examining his media accreditation.

“Next year, I have to get a better photo. I’m not really that fat, am I? It’s the fisheye lens they have in them web cameras,” he says.

Outside his hotel, the euro could be crumbling, the Crown Princess of Sweden might break her engagement, and ABBA could announce a secret comeback, and he wouldn’t know.

Some 1408 kilometers northeast of the hotel, garbage cans were emptied today, because Mr. Pakarinen lifted them to the curb in the morning, but for the next 19 days, for him, days will have no names. He goes from game day to game day, in a haze.

He says he likes Germany. Or, the little he’s seen in a day. A tram, a McDonald’s, a hotel, and a hockey arena.

“I saw people offering free hugs to strangers in the old town. That’s nice, right?” he adds, and looks at his accreditation.

“And I get free food with this. That’s nice, too.”

Mr. Pakarinen is off to the IIHF World Championship 2010 tournament in Cologne, Germany so I wanted to give you a heads-up about the fact that there will be hockey stuff here as well. Hope you enjoy it, even if you're not a big hockey fan. He usually keeps it pretty light, so let's hope he'll write mostly about things that are non-game related, because, really, those who care can just log on IIHF.com and see all his stuff and because - this is just my opinion - that stuff is so much more interesting.

Just a reminder, you can follow him on Twitter as well. (His latest tweet is also posted here, you'll see it in the left sidebar).

– Webmaster

I’ve always spent a lot of time with Dad at work. It was at the backroom of my uncle’s store he made all those hockey masks for me, and it was the same store where I crashed through the glass door. (I was trying to be as cool as Dad and his colleagues who ran up the three stairs inside the store, opened the door, and kept on running.)

When Dad took a job at another store, I followed him there, playing my first games of Pong there, and having endless hours of fun with a typewriter, and a pencil and a fan.

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