We really miss a lot when cult coach Risto Dufva leaves the stage, writes Jussi Paasi.
Jussi Paasi sports reporter
Rauman Lukko won Lappeenranta SaiPa on January 30th in 2014.
Nobody remembers anything about the match itself. Of course. It was one regular season game among others. Lukko took full points from the away team with goals 4–1.
However, something happened after the game that made headlines.
– At the beginning, we managed to throw a squirrel into the opponent’s transformer. That’s how we made the short circuit.
This is how Luko’s head coach described the course of the game Risto Dufva.
It was one of the hundreds of silly jokes that came out of Dufva’s mouth, with which he has made everyday, fleeting, often boring moments ticklishly funny.
This comment could be filled with Dufvisms alone, but I think it is more important to consider what Dufva’s idiosyncratic way of doing things teaches us.
Ice hockey is still extremely real and serious business. Or at least that’s how it usually appears on the outside. Believable scumbags behave according to the code.
For more than 30 years, Dufva has managed to break that stale code, which is maintained by game-hard and know-it-all experts, ridiculously wrinkled foreheads and real-life coaches, and journalists who repeat idle clichés.
Luckily we have RD.
When Dufva stands face-to-face with the basic readings in the joint interview with the coaches after the game and then throws in a few words of his aphorism or a strange simile, he momentarily frees the colleague standing next to him from his serious role.
No, of course I don’t mean that every pilot should perform armpit farts or do something weird in front of the media. But too much truth would allow a hockey pair to fly into the scrap heap.
Dufva is an excellent example of how humor, extremely tough standards and the discipline of the old union fit beautifully in the same package.
Ask those who played in Dufva’s teams if they had fun there. It was.
Ask if it was tough, sometimes even merciless. It was.
Even though the cult coach said this season that the playbook ran out of pages a long time ago, and there aren’t many pages left in the joke book either, the verbal fireworks have continued.
Unfortunately, it ends this spring. No one can replace Dufva. You won’t find a similar personality in hockey.
As Sport’s head coach, he still has time to throw a few squirrels into the opponent’s transformer. And to break the unnecessary seriousness.
We should enjoy that. And learn from it.