The Honest Finnish Taxpayer | 10 TAKEAWAYS

Throughout the week I keep a list of burning questions in my notebook. Things I like to refer back to when I'm getting ready to sit down and write my 10 Takeaways, presented by Ticketmaster. There's one that I've kept going back to but never pulled the trigger on until this week. It's not about hockey but involves a certain hockey player on the Devils team. I get questions about it on social media on the regular and figured this week, I'd finally get to the bottom of it.
I needed to know about Janne Kuokkanen's fantastic Twitter bio.

1.

So there I am, getting ready to ask Janne some questions, and here he thinks maybe it will be some sort of hockey-related question, but no. I needed answers about his Twitter bio. It reads 'Rehellinen suomalainen veronmaksaja'which translates to 'Honest Finnish Taxpayer'. So, yes, I asked Janne to tell me the story. The things I do for these 10 Takeaways! So this is how it played out. About six years ago when Janne was in school back in Finland, one of his classes had an assignment with a questionnaire and one question asked for the person answering to describe themselves, without using the obvious "I'm Janne and I'm a hockey player". And somehow, his answer turned out to be one of legends with 'I'm Janne, an honest Finnish taxpayer". That's it. That's the story of the creation of one of the best Twitter bios around. So simple, and yet magnificent.
2.
So while I had him, I figured I'd take the line of questioning one step further. I've heard so many different pronunciations of Janne Kuokkanen's name. There's the "Kooks", "Kuoks", you name it we've heard it. So I decided to go right to the source to figure out who is saying it right. Janne, with a big grin and tempered laugh, basically told me no one is. Which I guess isn't unusual for some of the names not typical in North America. So, I asked him how to pronounce it, he said it to me about ten times to which I repeated it back. Not once did I really nail it down. But he did tell me there should be more of an emphasis on the two middle 'k's than the first one.

3.

It was a wild ride last week with those two big wins over the Florida Panthers and New York Islanders. A 7-4 victory followed by a 4-0 victory? I'll take that any day. But it's rare you'd find New Jersey winning two consecutive games by a four-goal margin. The last time? Back in 2009, you know, the year Dawson Mercer turned eight. The really crazy part is that the back-to-back scores were almost identical.
And oddly enough, that span in 2009, between Feb 26 and 28, the Panthers were also involved. The Devils beat the Colorado Avalanche on Feb. 26, a shutout 4-0 victory. That game was followed by a Panthers matchup that ended 7-2 for New Jersey.

4.

When it's Kids Day at Prudential Center for a Devils game, there's that little extra buzz. Mostly because everyone gets excited to see the kids drawings on the big board at center ice of individual players. Some of them have a striking resemblance (see: Mackenzie Blackwood), and then there are the others... so obscure, so artistic, it gives you a great joy-filled laugh.

And not even the dialed-in nature of starting an NHL game could prevent a good laugh. I caught Lindy Ruff look up at the scoreboard when Jimmy Vesey was announced and his kid drawing was thrown on the big board. Even though I sit really high up in the press box, I could tell he had a good laugh, even more so, he tapped assistant coach Mark Recchi on the shoulder and pointed to the screen to look up. They definitely got a kick out of it as well!
Tweet from @NJDevils: Who is in this work of art today? *hint* he's in our starting lineup. Let's hear your guesses������#NJDevils | @betwayusa pic.twitter.com/TjIBVLVgWo

5.

Dawson Mercer is making it hard. Making it hard not to include something he's done in every edition of 10 Takeaways this season, he's just risen to the occasion in his rookie season, making it impossible not to have a Mercer story to follow every week.
Mercer is from one of the furthermost towns on the East Coast of Canada, and the town of Bay Roberts has become a hub of Devils fans. Mercer's face is everywhere, so is the Devils logo.

just went up last week. I caught Dawson in the hallway at Prudential Center and he was laughing trying to describe to me just how big that sign really is, pointing out to the right of it how little the door to the arena looks. That's the Bay Roberts Arena, where Mercer learned how to skate, and still skates on to this day when he's home during the summer. It's also not the first time he's seen his face plastered on the arena wall, though he did tell me this is the biggest banner yet. There's also one that hangs inside the arena to celebrate his accomplishments at the World Junior Championships with Hockey Canada.

6.

Depending on the arena, when a player is scratched on the road, whether it's for lineup decisions or injury reasons, there are some press boxes where I end up sitting alongside the players. At Madison Square Garden over the weekend, I sat next to the Devils scratches, which included Alexander Holtz.
I was truly intrigued watching him watch the team play. Lindy Ruff spoke after the game about the conversation he had with Alexander and said it was a positive one where they were both on the same page in understanding the trajectory of his development. Up in the press box, it gave me another perspective. Holtz watched everything, in intricate detail, often looking down at the TV provided at the smallest plays, ones that to my non-athlete brain might seem insignificant. So, I'd venture to surmise that whatever Lindy Ruff was asking Holtz to pay attention to, he was, and with great detail.

7.

I found out that Holtz speaks conversational Spanish as well as Swedish and English. He took Spanish for four years in school. He's not quite as fluent now, but says he can order food off a menu quite well! Apparently Christian Jaros also speaks a multitude of languages, at least four, although he did joke that he knows only about 20 percent of some of the languages. And here I thought my ability to fluently speak both English and French was impressive.

8.

As I turned the corner from the Devils locker room the other day, there I spotted a familiar figure crutching his way in a direction towards me. It was Miles Wood, fresh off of his right hip surgery. He stopped and we talked for a bit, and I'm happy to report that Miles is in really fine form. Obviously, there's a long road to recovery ahead, but to see him stop by the arena for his recovery I think made everyone, especially Miles feel really good. He really was in really great spirits, chatting away, laughing as he always does and as always, is just looking forward to being 'back out there with the boys'.

9.

Before the game against the Boston Bruins, I also bumped into Jack Hughes outside the locker room. He too has a great attitude about the path he's on towards healing and was his usual chatty self, that boyish smile still on his face. There's something to be said for positive attitudes, feeling like yourself and being around the team. It's healing, in a different way, for these guys. It's great to see these two guys who are big pieces of the Devils puzzle around the room and around their teammates.

10.

Tomorrow night you might want to find a way to tune into the Devils little brothers, the Utica Comets as they square off with the Rochester Americans. The Comets have been on an unbelievable run to start the 2021-22 American Hockey League (AHL) season, a 10-0-0 start is beyond impressive, but it's just short of an AHL record. That record stands at 11 games, funnily enough, held by the 1984-85 Rochester Americans.
Wednesday night the Comets will attempt to tie the record against the franchise that holds the record and it certainly looks like coach Kevin Dineen has the personnel to get the job done. His goaltenders, both in their first years at the AHL level, have undefeated numbers. Nico Daws is 6-0 with a .936 save percentage and Akira Schmid, no slouch himself is 3-0 with a 1.31 goals against average and a .953 save percentage.