Me and my barn

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I can see magic in your eyes
I hear the magic in your sighs
Just when I think I’m gonna get away
I hear those words that you always say
– Steve Miller Band, “Abracadabra”

The first time I walked into the rink, it didn’t even have all the walls in place. The town had been waiting for the indoor rink for fifteen years, ever since Finland had got their first one in 1965, and a friend of mine was so excited about the rink finally being built that he wandered around the construction site to monito its progress. And one time, he and his father took me and my Dad with them.

“That’s where the rink will be,” he told me. “That’s where the dressing room will be. That’s where the cafeteria will be. This will be the sauna.”

He was right, even though, forty years later, I’ve never been back to the sauna.

The rink, including the cafeteria, was like a clubhouse to me in my teenage years. Outside school and my room (with my tapes and ZX Spectrum), that’s where I spent most of my time.

I knew every inch of the arena. And by every inch, I mean every inch. (Well, except for the sauna, of course).

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The Risto Revenge

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“Maybe she’s introverted,” I told Daughter. We were talking about a teammate of hers.

“She’s pretty vocal in the dressing room, though,” she said.

“When I was in high school, I had days when I didn’t speak to anyone. Not a word.”

“I could never do that,” said Daughter, showing great insight. She’s quite the chatterbox.

“Well, I may be lazy and all, but when it comes down to just making your mind up about something, I can be pretty stubborn. If I had decided that it was going to be a silent day, that’s what it was going to be.”

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IIHF.com: What you see is what you call

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A referee can only call what he or she sees. But anyone who’s ever seen a hockey game knows that sometimes the on-ice officials miss calls, even though everyone else in the arena seems to have seen what happened.

As part of the continual development of officials, the IIHF has conducted studies on the referees’ vision. What do they actually see, and how do they make observations on the ice when things happen fast?

“We knew how fast officials can skate or run, or how much they could squat at the gym, so we wanted to go a little deeper and see if we had missed some part of the equation,” said Joel Hansson, Officiating Development Manager at the IIHF.

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NHL.com: Finland, Sweden, hockey rivalry, and me

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Ken Dryden, the Hall of Famer, Canadiens legend, and author, wrote in The Game that “the golden age of anything is the age of everyone’s childhood.”

I was comfortably out of my teens before Finland ever was a contender in international tournaments. In my childhood, getting relegated from the top division was a more likely outcome than a medal. To win the whole thing? Not in the cards.

In other words, it wasn’t easy for me to find homegrown heroes in what was my golden age of Finnish hockey. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think you’ll ever find a better passer than Matti Hagman or a more creative winger than Hannu Kapanen. But to me they were Helsinki IFK stars first and Team Finland stars second, even if Kapanen’s disallowed goal would’ve clinched Finland’s first Olympic medal in 1976.

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Twenty-five new years

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“In case you’ll be back for New Year’s, you’re more than welcome to come to the party,” she said as before she gave me a hug..

“Sure. Merry Christmas!” I said.

She walked me to the door,  the way she always did and does: her head held high, and her gorgeous hair bopping with every step.

I walked to my car and switched the CD in the trunk of my BMW to Manic Street Preachers and turned up the volume of my car stereo. Then I drove toward the ferry terminal, and headed over to Finland.

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He was there

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I wasn’t surprised when Alpo Suhonen called me one fall morning two years ago, He often called me to talk about his new ideas – and there were a lot of them.

I was stunned, though, when he asked me if I’d be interested in writing his biography. After all, I had been the one who’d been urging him to write one for years, ever since I first heard his fantastic, and fantastical, stories while working on another book with him almost ten years ago. We were supposed to be working on his philosophy of coaching, but more than once or twice, I realized I was listening to Alpo tell me about his adventures, the places he’d been to, and the people he’d met. (The list is long and you’d know all the names, but let me just say “David Bowie”).

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IIHF: Jalonen eyes an Olympic surprise

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When a coach has won three IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship titles (2011, 2019, 2022), an Olympic gold medal (2022), and a World Juniors (2016), and led his homeland to the top of the IIHF World Ranking, you wouldn’t expect him to sign with a 20th-ranked national team competing in Division I Group A.

But that’s exactly what Finnish legend Jukka Jalonen did last summer when he signed a two-year contract with Italy, the host nation for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

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Curtain call

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In grade school, the last lesson of every Friday was reserved for organized goofing around. In other words, on Fridays, we had an hour to showcase our creativity, and most of the times, a few kids would tell jokes or maybe perform a sketch or two. Sometimes I was one of those kids with a short play or a sketch of my own.

It was important for me to be funny so whatever we put on, was always a comedy. Not that we always succeeded. Comedy’s hard, a lot of hit and miss.

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Learning by traveling

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I’m amazed by myself. But not in a good way. In recent years, I’ve come to realize how little I know about the world. Yes, a kind reader would interrupt me now and tell me that it’s just age doing its work, that it shows signs of great wisdom to see one’s fallacies and shortcomings. 

To which I would say, “thank you”, because even if I’m not always especially kind to myself, I do try to be kind to others. 

Unfortunately for me, such encouraging words never last long because I then turn around and talk to Son, a walking Wikipedia if I ever knew one. And should there be a page that needs updating, or has missing links, Daughter will surely patch things up with her knowledge. 

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