About Risto Risto Pakarinen is a Finnish hockey journalist and entrepreneur, based in Stockholm, Sweden. His next project is translating Ken Dryden's "The Game" into Finnish. Besides Finnish and Swedish magazines, his articles have been published in The Hockey News and on ESPN.com. For more about Risto, visit www.ristopakarinen.com. Feedback E-mail Risto your comments at: [email protected] Recent Posts One in five million Meet Peter Forsberg Happily ever after The Russians are coming Complete Archive April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

One in five million

What were you dreaming about 15 years ago? Have you had a chance to make that fortune, get that girl, win that prize? If you did, would you want to retire at the top?

I think not.

And yet, that’s what we expect from our sports heroes. We want their stories to end on a high note even though winning the championship, getting that trophy is never the end of the story. Life goes on. The show must go on.

And I think no matter whether the Ducks win the Cup or not, Teemu Selanne shouldn’t retire just to finish a story on a high note. He should retire if he feels that playing at that level doesn’t give him anything anymore.

Fifteen years ago, Teemu was a twenty-something handsome kid who had swept Finnish mothers and daughters off their feet and had all the fathers and sons chasing his hockey cards and following his every move on the ice.

Jari Kurri, Finland’s Mr. Hockey, was at the end of his career, and a national hero for all his accomplishments in the NHL, but still distant. Kurri hardly ever posed on the covers of magazines, and while Finland was following his Cup quests, and everybody was proud of him and how he had climbed to the top of the world, he was above everything.

Selanne was on a first-name basis with everybody. He was, and is, simply Teemu. A part of the reason is that there were about 150 other Finnish stars, athletes and entertainers, named Jari, but still. You talk to a Finn about Teemu, and you can be sure you’re talking about the same guy.

Teemu was out there, a Finnish pioneer representing the small country in the Great White North, just like Kurri, Matti Hagman, Mikko Leinonen, Reijo Ruotsalainen, and Risto Siltanen had been. But unlike the players a generation before him, Teemu was doing it in front of our eyes.

And he was doing it in style.

A style very unlike the Finnish stereotype of Finns themselves. No, Teemu wasn’t quiet. No, he didn’t only talk when drunk. No, he wasn’t a macho man, out of touch with his feelings. He worked part time at a kindergarten and enjoyed visiting hospitals and making sick kids feel better. He laughed and joked, he was confident, he was a man of the world – and he was having fun all the way.

In addition, as a hockey player, he was something Finns had never been. He scored goals. (True, Kurri did too, but at the same time, Kurri was known as the best two-way player in the world, always making sure he carried his weight in the defensive zone as well). Teemu is a sniper who loves to score goals. He wants to be on the ice with eight seconds remaining, looking for that big goal.

And here’s the difference, he seemed to always get it, too.

There’s only one but in this great story. Besides a Finnish Elite League title, Teemu has never won “anything.”

Sure, he was great in Nagano when Finland won – yes, won – Olympic bronze. He was excellent in Turin last year, a key player on the World Cup team in 2004, and got a hat trick in the classic game against Sweden in the Helsinki World Championships in 2003.

But Finland lost the Turin final, the World Cup final, and the game in the 2003 tournament is a classic because Sweden rallied back from a 5-1 deficit to win 6-5.

The last time a Finnish player was on the Stanley Cup winning team was in 2001, when Ville Nieminen was plowing snow on Peter Forsberg’s driveway in Colorado. Before that, it was Jere Lehtinen in 1999 and before that, Esa Tikkanen with the Rangers in 1994. Three Finnish Stanley Cup winners in the last 13 years, and five in total: Nieminen, Lehtinen, Tikkanen, Kurri, and Ruotsalainen.

This year, Teemu is the lone Finn chasing his dream. And with that, mine. If Teemu can’t bring the Cup to Finland, who can? If the most un-Finnish finisher falls on the finish line, too, what hope is left for the rest of us?

Teemu, bring it home.

Posted by Risto @ 1:32 p.m.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Meet Peter Forsberg

Peter Forsberg loves hockey. Hockey’s the one thing that’s kept him focused through hard times, and God knows he’s been through some tribulations. At his lowest point, a few years ago, he even took a timeout from hockey, to recoup and regroup.

He just finished writing an 11-page report from the World Championships, with analysis and recaps of all the games and teams – in great detail. Then he sent the document to his friends.

Oh, oh no, this is not the Peter Forsberg who was traded from Philadelphia to Nashville this season. This is a Swedish friend of mine, or a friend of a friend who’s always good for a great talk about hockey.

And NHL hockey, for that matter. He’s not into the Swedish league that much. He loves the NHL.

I guess you have to love something to do what Peter’s about to do next. Now that he’s got the flame burning again, he’s thinking of getting his back tattooed with the logos of all the Stanley Cup winners since he was born. Each logo would have the years they won it underneath, so, for example, there’d only be one Oilers logo, but then all the years neatly underneath. And then he’s going to add new ones for the rest of his life.

(And, who knows, maybe he’ll have to add new rings to his body, just like the Cup itself).

He’s never seen an NHL game live, and yet there’s something about the game, the League, the Cup drive that gets a hold of his soul and sends it flying. He says that between 2003 and 2005 everything was just black, and “the only thing I had any interest in, was the Stanley Cup.”

Then there’s Jamie, the Avalanche fan that also happens to love the band Journey. In fact, she named her daughter Journey. Journey Alexa. The middle name Alexa is derived from Alex Ovechkin.

Her son, Patrick, was named after Patrick Roy.

(Alex was a nod to her husband, a Caps fan, there’s room for both in their household).

It’s Peter and Jamie that are the backbone of the NHL, the force that pushes the sport forward and upward. They’re also a nice reflection of the new kind of hockey fans, one in Sweden, the other in Denver, joined by their love for a game.

And I thought I was a hockey freak with my 50-plus hockey hats in the basement.

Posted by Risto @ 12:29 p.m.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Happily ever after

Once upon a time there was a young hockey player with exceptional talent. His talent was so great that teams from faraway cities came calling and offered him great riches and treasures if he would only come to play for them.

And he did. And he came, and he showed a lot of promise. He was just as good as all the reports had said.

He was a gem, a rock to build the franchise’s new multifunction arena on.  Too bad he was playing on a team that never made it past the first round of playoffs.

And that wasn’t the only obstacle our hero was facing. There was also something else…

Mario Lemieux and the injuries and illnesses that still keep us second guessing how good he might have been, Wayne Gretzky and The Trade that took him out of Edmonton, Saku Koivu and the injuries and illnesses that still keep us second guessing how good he might have been.

We all love good drama, and while there’s plenty of it in just one hockey game, there’s even more outside the game, and in a ten or 20-year-career of a player.

With only four teams left in this year’s Cup chase, it’s time to start looking at the best storylines.

I named the storylines using song titles to honor the greatest hockey band there ever was – Journey.

Don’t Stop Believin’ – Teppo Numminen, Buffalo Sabres
Teppo Numminen won Olympic silver in Torino last year. He also won Olympic Silver n Calgary in 1988. That same year he played his first NHL game. That’s the year this year’s draftees were born. Teppo is the longest-serving active player without a Cup ring still in the running with his close to 1,400 NHL games. It took him sixteen years to make it to the second round of the playoffs. (Thinking about Teppo makes me angry at the people who voted for Fitzpatrick).

Positive Touch – Teemu Selänne, Anaheim Ducks
The rookie took the league by storm, broke – no, demolished – the goal-scoring record, then charmed everybody with his smile, his sense of humor, and juvenile energy that is contagious. He won the Richard Trophy in 1999, as the first player, and then scored only 44 goals in the last two seasons (in Colorado and San Jose) before coming back home to California and getting 40 and 48 goals. The smile’s not as beautiful anymore, thanks to Derian Hatcher, but the juvenile energy is.

Faithfully – Daniel Alfredsson, Ottawa Senators
Daniel Alfredsson was drafted by the Senators in 1994, joined the club in 1995, and won the Calder Trophy in 1996 as the first Senator ever. The curly-haired sniper became the captain of the team in 1999-00, and then shaved his head a few years later, but remained a great player and a leader. Ten seasons with the same team convinced Alfie to sign an extension for another five seasons, and who knows, maybe Alfredsson will be first European captain to hoist the Cup?

Still They Ride – Chris Chelios and Dominik Hasek, Detroit Red Wings
Chelios, 45, and Hasek, 42, are the two oldest players in the League, and between them they have won and done everything you can think of in hockey. In 1987, the year Sidney Crosby was born, Hasek was Player of the Year in a country that ceased to exist in 1992. He was drafted in 1983, two years later than Chelios. Now, 25 years later his GAA in the playoffs is 1.51. And Chelios.  He’s been around for so long that when you pull up his stats on hockeydb.com, you have to scroll down. I think he’s going to break Gordie Howe’s record.

One thing is sure: A Swede is going to win the Stanley Cup. But that’s an old story.

Posted by Risto @ 2:41 p.m.

Friday, May 4, 2007

The Russians are coming

For five years, I’ve been telling everyone that in five years, the Russians are going to dominate world hockey once again. So if they don’t win the World Championships this year, I still have a few years in the bank.

Admittedly, you don’t have to be genius to make that prediction. With the talent in the teams the Russians have iced even since 1991, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fact that they have only three medals, and no titles since 1992, is a bigger miracle than that they lost one game in Lake Placid.

After all, Soviet Union won the World Championship 22 times between 1954 and 1991, and went home without a medal only once. And it’s not like the quality of players went down. Just look at their roster from the 2002 Olympics: Danny Markov, Alexei Kovalev, Alexei Zhamnov, Sergei Gonchar, Pavel Datsyuk, Pavel Bure, Igor Larionov, Sergei Fedorov, Alexei Yashin, Nikolai Khabibulin, Sergei Samsonov, Maxim Afinogenov, Ilya Bryzgalov, Ilya Kovalchuk…

Fifteen years without a championship is a long time (unless you’re a Leafs fan, in which case it’s nothing). The 20-somethings of today can barely remember the times when CCCP was synonymous with total hockey domination.

Sorry, Canada, but when I close my eyes, I don’t see or hear Paul Henderson. I see Guy Lafleur covering his face when Vladimir Krutov fakes a shot, then skates around Lafleur like a pylon in the 1981 Canada Cup, and I hear a legendary Finnish broadcaster say, “See, kids, if Lafleur had worn a helmet, maybe he wouldn’t have done that.”

The Helsinki World Championships in 1974 is the first tournament I remember; I was seven years old. Between 1974 and 1981, the CCCP men won the World Championship (the only tournament that mattered to me) five times.

I wore number 17, just like Kharlamov, and my coach-dad put together a line with me on the left wing, and numbers 16 (Petrov) and 13 (Mikhailov) next to me.

Even if I idolized them, the Russians were always scary. And distant.

The language was difficult when you can’t even make out the letters. They hardly celebrated their goals, but when they did, they sometimes kissed each other on the ice.

I remember sitting in the back seat of our car, just outside the old Helsinki arena, listening to the radio when somebody called in and said something about the “russkies.” I asked mom about that, and she replied, “They’re actually called Soviets, not all of them are Russians. It’s not nice to call them russkies.”

Ten years later, Kharlamov had died in a car accident, and Gretzky was my man, but having a Soviet team go through our town was still an event. Not only to see them play – and boy could they play – but also because of the trading of things that took place after the games. A hat for a hat, sure! Pins, anyone? A good stick got you crystal glasses and a samovar. Apparently, the Soviet players never used the slap shot because they didn’t want to break their sticks.

I don’t know. I just know that I grew up watching that elegant hockey, the tape-to-tape passes, and the skating that made some of the lesser figure skaters jealous, let alone mere mortal hockey players.

There’s no Soviet Union anymore, and of the players on the current Team Russia at the World Championships (that no longer is the only tournament that matters to me) in Moscow, only seven players were born in the 1970s. The oldest player on the team, Alexander Kharitonov, was fifteen when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Washington Capitals’ Alexander Ovechkin hadn’t even picked up hockey yet when Boris Yeltsin was standing on a tank in front of the Russian White House.

Russia has rebuilt, and Russian hockey has recouped. The Russian Hockey League has quickly become a viable option for top European players, and they don’t need to be trading their hats for sticks anymore.

Feeling their increasing power, and sensing the powerlessness of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), the Russians even opted out of the NHL-IIHF agreement that oversees, for example, player transfers from Europe to the NHL. Now, when the NHL didn’t budge, and the IIHF was busy creating pseudo research of European players’ career paths and sending press releases of a dream meeting between “an NHL team” and a European champion (of a league that doesn’t exist yet), the Russians came around.
 
According to ESPN, the NHL, NHL Players' Association, the IIHF and the seven top European player-producing nations will hammer out the final details of a pact that will reportedly pay European clubs $200,000 for every player signed by an NHL team.
 
How much would you pay to get Malkin or Kovalchuk?
 
But let me tell you, those Russians are going to win a big tournament within five years. For sure.

Posted by Risto @ 12:43 p.m.