“The Finnish journalist reflects on the father-son bond in hockey and how it touched his family.”

More after the jump.

Father to son
It seems like yesterday I was sitting here, writing about Teemu and Teppo, and their pursuit of the Stanley Cup. Then the Hurricanes and Oilers wiped away both their dreams, and I was left quoting obscure Finnish rock lyrics.

Here we go again. The playoffs are here, and besides all those Ducks fans in the U.S., there’s a small nation about 5,600 miles east of Los Angeles pulling for Teemu.

In the past two days, I’ve been watching both the Finnish and Swedish leagues come to their end this season. I’ve always loved to watch the new champions celebrate, skate around the rink, thank their fans, hug each other, carry the coach, and generally just grin and yell a lot.

One of my favorite celebration moments is the one from the Miracle on Ice when goaltender Jim Craig looks for his father in the stands. Another one was seeing Ray Bourque win – and seeing his son, Ryan, being so happy he cried. This season, I was pulling for Mikael Simons of Mora in the Swedish Elite League because his father is the GM of the team. I love Team Hossa, aka the Slovakian national team, and I remember how Peter Forsberg and “Big Foppa” Kent Forsberg celebrated winning the World Championship in 1998.

Basically, every time there is a father-son moment, I’m moved to tears. Maybe it’s the fact that sports are the modern era way of uniting fathers and sons, where sons can follow in their father’s footsteps in a way that few sons follow these days. Maybe it’s just the fact that sports seems to be the one area where fathers and sons show their emotions.

Or, maybe it has something to do with my own father, my first hockey idol and coach.

I actually don’t remember how I ever started playing hockey. I have a faint memory of a local hockey club handing out some information at our school, but at the same time, I remember my best friend of the time telling me that he’d join the club. Maybe he had seen the info before me, I am not sure.

What I am sure of, though, is that my father must have been thrilled. He was a minor league player in his time, fast as a bullet, but having started organized hockey fairly late, not the most skilled winger in the world. He was quite the athlete when he was younger, winning a Finnish championship in pesäpallo, a Finnish version of baseball.

He wasn’t my first coach, but the one who’s coached me the longest time (official hockey coaching only, not counting coaching for life). So once I had joined the local club with my buddy, my father pulled some strings and got me signed up for another team as well.

In my first year, I played with two teams and on some weekends I would have a game in the morning, and then change my sweater and socks in the car on our way to my second game of the day in the afternoon.

Next season, my father was the coach of the team. I remember how I lost a table hockey game against him and got freakishly angry. The next morning, when he drove me to school, I was still sulking, and my father gave a speech about the art of losing. I’ve never forgot it.

I remember all those nights we practiced skating on the outside rink close to our house. I remember one afternoon at the local rink, during a public skating hour, how I practiced stopping on one leg. Right, left, fall, up, right, left.

While I was working on my slapshot – which is still kind of weak, and both my father and I know why – he got a formal coaching education, graduating with the highest Finnish coaching certificate about thirty years ago. And when he got back from his final one-week session, he gave me an Ilves, Tampere scarf that I still have and use.

The next fall we had a “training camp” in August. My father who had probably never typed anything in his life, or written much more than postcards home, spent weeks putting together a hockey book for all of us. On the cover he drew a caricature of a hockey player – he may not be a writer but he knows how to hold a pen when it’s time to draw – and inside the book there were basic drill explained, hockey stories and quotes from the likes of Fred Shero and Anatoli Tarasov. I have a copy in our basement. Time to read it again.

I was a pretty good player, but thinking back, my father was probably even better as a coach and had more potential as one than I had as a player. He was an assistant coach on the Helsinki district team for 15-year-olds, and then head coach in my district team when I turned 15.

And so we moved on in the ranks, from the juniors, one age group at a time until my father skipped ahead one year and I got a new coach. Maybe he thought he’d try to make a career as a coach, maybe he thought it was best for me to have somebody else coach me – or both.

Or maybe he just thought he’d skip ahead and wait for me because the year after, he was my coach again. And my PR agent. But not a very good one. One time he embarrassed me in front of the coolest girl in our school, one that had come to see our tournament and see me play, and another time he forgot to tell me that the girls that followed all our games and practices had asked for my photo.

(In case you’re still interested, send me an email and I’ll send you a photo).

And then I went to college.

My father coached for a couple of years, and then took over the job as the head of coaching in the club. While I was struggling with my hockey, and then quit, he was in the club management.

The club was doing well, on the ice at least, and got promoted to the Finnish Elite League.

Until the bankruptcy.

The players found new teams, and the club has rebounded back to the Finnish division I.

My father hadn’t been to the rink for ten years when I bought him a season ticket this Christmas. He’s still paying the debts from the past.

Hockey’s given him a lot, but it’s also had its price.

Yesterday, we spoke on the phone. About hockey, of course. He’d been surfing the Net for celebration photos from the Finnish finals.

I was, too.