"When I got back to the bench and they showed it on the (scoreboard), the crowd got pretty loud. I think it really hit home at that point.
"It feels a lot better knowing we got the win tonight, too."
The dress rehearsals played out some 10 years before this, on the outdoor rinks and with the youth squads nearly 7,000 kilometers away from his new home in Calgary.
When he imagined what the first one would feel like as a youngster in Tampere, Finland, it bore a striking resemblance to how the real-life showing actually played out in just his sixth NHL contest.
"When I was younger, I was taught to shoot the puck as much as possible. Shoot, shoot, shoot. When I pictured my first goal when I was younger, that's how it went in - a simple shot from the point.
"It's the kind of player I've developed into now, so I just tried to do that on this goal."
Valimaki started the play moments earlier with an aggressive, left-point pinch - that unruffled show of confidence once again on display as he kept the play alive, and his black-and-yellow-clad opponents firmly on their heels, deep in their own end.
As the puck caromed off the near wall and back to him at the top of the blue, he faked out a flat-footed Boston defender before dashing around him and filtering a shot through a crowd.
The wrister handcuffed his normally dependable countryman, Tuukka Rask, fluttering up, over his head, tumbling softly to the canvas and trickling ever-so-slowly across the goal line.
