History will be made

Posted on December 5, 2021 by Risto

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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End of an Era

Posted on November 28, 2021 by Risto

Back in March 1965, Urho Kekkonen, the President of Finland, officially declared the hockey world championships opened from a brand new presidential box in the brand new Hakametsä arena in Tampere.

Finland had been up as host of the 1963 Worlds but with no indoor rink in the country, and no government commitment for one either, the Finns agreed to back Sweden’s bid. There were more-than-vague plans to build an arena in Helsinki, and a delegation from Tampere had visited the 1962 Worlds in Colorado Springs on an expedition.

In the end, Tampere beat Helsinki by a year, and hence, Kekkonen made the 200-kilometre trip from Helsinki to open the tournament and watch the opening game, which alone tells a 21st century reader how the world has changed.

It was Czechoslovakia v East Germany.

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Home away from home

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Risto

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Finland for the first time in 350 days and went up to the newly renovated Helsinki Olympic Stadium and its tower to see the sights.

The view is fantastic – the best in town – regardless of whether you look out south, toward downtown or east toward the swimming pool that was the venue for the 1952 Olympic water sports.

My favourite is the one to the north, toward my home away from home, the Helsinki rink. Built in 1966, the second indoor rink in the country, it’s never really even needed a name. Except “The Rink”.

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Den oändliga historien

Posted on July 25, 2021 by Risto

Det jag kommer att berätta är en sann historia, det vet jag nu. Men inte i början. Ingen vet i början av en historia att den redan har börjat.

Jag var nämligen upptagen av att springa på löpbandet och hade du sett mig då skulle du förstått att jag inte hade mycket energi över för någonting annat. Som till exempel att titta på folk nere på plan 2 i Sollentuna Centrum. Jag var ingen löpare, jag var frilansskribent.

Och jag var där för att bli av med skrivkrampen som hade förföljt mig länge. (Om du undrar om man kan springa ifrån ett sådant spöke så är svaret nej, men någonting måste man ju försöka och jag hade försökt allt annat).

Nu är jag där igen, går runt i cirklar när jag borde komma till saken.

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A Letter to a Very Special High School Graduate

Posted on June 11, 2021 by Risto

Son,

School’s out and it’s time for me to give you some fatherly piece of advice, but as you know, I’m not much of a speaker. Besides, all the most profound things have already been said by others before me.

And those others were two American Bobs, namely Gale and Zemeckis, who wrote the screenplay for the best movie ever made: Back to the Future (Part I).

(Who said ¡Three Amigos!?)

It just so happens that the main character in the movie is a kid about your age, about to leave school, stuck in a period between the past and the future, something we call present. It also just so happens that I saw the movie for the first time when I was your age, about to graduate from high school, not knowing at all what I wanted to do.

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Rock! Rock! (Till The Puck Drops)

Posted on May 3, 2021 by Risto

When the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Vancouver Canucks in the 2009 Western Conference Semifinal, Mats Sundin sat on the bench and hummed along “Chelsea Dagger,” the Hawks’ goal song.

Maybe it was the sudden shock of his realizing that not only was the Canucks’ playoff run over, so was his career.

Or maybe “Chelsea Dagger” is simply a hell of a catchy song.

“Music is such a big part of hockey games that music has been played at games even during the pandemic when there have been no fans in the stands,” says Kaj Ahlsved, a Finnish researcher who wrote his PhD thesis at Åbo Akademi’s musicology department on music in sports events. Hockey was one of the sports he studied.

“You can’t think of a hockey game without music,” he told Hockey Wanderlüst over Zoom.

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Meet Sweden’s #1 Skills Coach

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Risto

Last week, in the Maple Leafs game against the Oilers, William Nylander carried the puck into the offensive zone. At the hash marks, he made a quick turn to shake Ryan Nugent-Hopkins off his back, and passed the puck to Jake Muzzin who fired a shot from the point. Nylander followed the play and tied the game with a slap shot from the slot.

It’s a move Nylander does often. He makes a quick turn to win time for himself.

“Turns and winning time” was also the topic of Joachim Ahlgren Bloom’s recent presentation at Global Skills Showcase, organized by the NHL Coaches Association’s partner Coaches’ Site. They went looking for the best skill development coaches in the game and of the original 250 nominees, twenty were invited to make a presentation.

Ahlgren Bloom, 47, was the only skills development coach from Sweden to get the invitation.

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Life on Planet Lankinen

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Risto

Before the season, few people gave the Chicago Blackhawks any chance of making the playoffs. No, no, this was a team in a rebuild mode, especially when Jonathan Toewshad to step away due to illness.

And yet, the Hawks are currently fourth in the Central division, a couple of games over .500, and they’ve done it thanks to heroic performances by Patrick Kane and their Finnish rookie goaltender Kevin Lankinen.

Lankinen, 25, may be a rookie, but his hockey journey is almost the perfect example of how to build a successful career, step by step.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kevin Lankinen (@kevinlankinen)

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Movie magic

Posted on March 7, 2021 by Risto

In the latest issue of Empire*, English director-writer-producer Edgar Wright invites his famous friends to tell about their magic movie moments, things they remember about having watched movies with others in a theatre.

Because, as we all know, that’s where the real magic happens.

In the magazine, there’s Steven Spielberg talking about the desert crossing in Lawrence of Arabia, and Chris Evans looking back at the time he saw Neo stop the bullets in Matrix, and Paul Rudd chuckling at his memory of seeing Indiana Jones shoot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Pelicans ground themselves and go carbon neutral

Posted on March 4, 2021 by Risto

LAHTI, Finland –– Some fans probably rubbed their eyes when they came to a Lahti Pelicans game in January and saw that some of their favourite players had special numbers on their sweaters.

Top scorer Ryan Lasch’s usual “19” had become 2019 and goaltender Jasper Patrikainen’s “70” had a “%” after it.

Both symbolized the Pelicans and their hometown Lahti’s environmental goals. Lahti s the European Green Capital 2021 and in line with that, the Pelicans aim to become the world’s first carbon-neutral hockey team by the end of 2021.

Lasch’s 2019 is a reference to when Lahti stopped using coal, while 70 percent on Patrikainen’s sweater refers to the decrease in gashouse emissions since 1990. Other numbers were, for example, “8%” and “650 GWh.”

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