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).