Category Archives: Hockey

The comeback kid

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For years in my teens, I had a 1982 hockey World Championship poster on my wall. In the image, Snoopy is playing hockey with Woodstock, under the most common cheers for each of the eight teams in the tournament. There was “Go Canada, go!” ,”Heja Sverige” for Sweden, “USA, hey, hey, hey!” … and “Do toho!” for Czechoslovakia

That was new.

Since then,  I do tohoed the Czechoslovak players until I went to the World Championships in Ostrava in 2004, and realized that the loudest hockey crowd I have ever heard was chanting something completely  different, and nothing like do toho. I asked around, and was told they were saying what sounded like escheyeden to me, and means, “One more [goal]!”

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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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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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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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IIHF: Not the usual route for Finns’ parade

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The Finnish national team is no 1960s and ‘70s Montreal Canadiens, yet, but with three gold medals in four straight finals – three Worlds and one Olympic final – the citizens of Finland know well how to celebrate a hockey championship.

Maybe all too well.

The cities of Helsinki and Tampere build plywood walls around their landmark fountains and statues to protect them from the celebratory gestures, such as climbing on top of them.

That didn’t help as the walls came down and the fans went up.

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Even Hockey Can’t Offer Escape

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It’s difficult to focus on hockey when missiles are flying in Europe, not unimaginably far from where I’m sitting and typing this. And yet, all I want to do is think of hockey, hoping that the game will, once again, offer me refuge from the grim realities outside the rink.

Then again, all through my lifetime, hockey has been at the center of political attention, a venue for proxy fights and battles, from the 1969 World Championship, relocated from Czechoslovakia to Sweden due to the Soviet invasion of the original host country – and then the Czechs and Slovaks beating the the Soviets twice in the tournament – to the 1972 Summit Series to the Canada Cups to the 1980 Olympics and the Miracle on Ice all the way to the IIHF relocating the 2021 Worlds from Belarus.

There’s no escape.

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Jalonen, Finland check one more box

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Finns love a lot of things – sauna, for example – but right at the top of the list there’s hockey, and then there’s sticking it to the man and sometimes the stars are aligned in a way that brings their two loves together. The Beijing Olympics men’s final was one such event when the Finnish Lions downed ROC 2-1, claiming the nation’s first Olympic gold medal in ice hockey.

With Finland currently a giant of the game, it’s hard to imagine a time when the men’s team didn’t make the final of big tournaments in regular intervals.

About 45 per cent of the population are too young – born in 1983 or later – to remember the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary where Finland beat the Soviets, 2-1. Back then, the win was enough to give Finns the silver medals, behind the Soviet Union but ahead of Sweden (and sticking it to the Swedes is also on the list of things Finns love).

And about a third of the current population either wasn’t born or they hadn’t turned five in 1995, when Finland won their first World Championship, in Sweden.

There’s at least a generation of Finns who never felt the truly bitter sting of disappointment.

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History will be made

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When Dre Barone takes the ice next Wednesday in Laval, it may be a small step for him but it’s a leap for hockey culture. Barone will be the first openly gay male official in an AHL game.

In fact, he’s the only openly gay male hockey participant in a pro league. For now anyway.

For Barone, Wednesday’s game between the Laval Rocket and the Manitoba Moose marks both a comeback and a step up. After hundreds of games in the ECHL and the Southern Professional Hockey League, he feels he’s now ready for the American Hockey League.

“The ECHL is still a one-ref league, the highest pro level league not to have gone to the two-ref system. Fitness is not a problem and since I live in Canada, I’ve been able to find places to skate. I was also at the NHL Officiating Combine in August so I feel prepared,” Barone says.

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