In the second week of November, it started to happen. 22 years old Samuel Helenius had just started driving from Los Angeles to Ontario after morning practice. Ontario, California is located about an hour away from the City of Angels. There, Helenius was supposed to play the so-called farm league in the ranks of the local AHL team Reign in the evening.
On the phone, Helenius was instructed to turn the nose of his car back towards home. The top hockey player of the second generation was promoted to the ranks of the NHL team Los Angeles Kings. Instead of the AHL match, he would play the first NHL match of his career against Columbus the next day in a big arena.
– It made me sweat. I was excited, excited and my heart was pounding. I immediately called my mother, good-natured Helenius recalls with a laugh to Urheilu.
Exactly 28 years earlier, also after Samuel’s two years spent in the AHL The same-father, had made his NHL debut in a Calgary shirt against Colorado. The boy’s quick turns also got the father moving.
– On Friday, I received a message that the plane will leave at seven on Saturday morning, is there time? Time, time. Suddenly Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off work and off to go. From the airport, it was time to go straight to the ice rink, Sami-isä times.
Soon, like his father, the big boy was skating on the ice in the traditional rookie round. In that, the other team sends the newcomer, who is playing his first match, to the pre-match warm-up for a while alone.
– Yes, a tear rolled down the father’s cheeks when the young man’s dream came true. It was a really emotional moment, the father admits.
In the match itself, the boy Helenius, who is profiled as a chain player of the four chain, played without bias and well. Helenius fulfilled his ten-minute role excellently – skated well, worked hard, always tackled when there was a chance and immediately scored the first power point of his career in the form of an assist.
– It was quite a feeling. After all, it’s every hockey player’s dream. It ended up being a bit of a blur, and I didn’t remember anything much after the game. When the game started, I just thought, now it’s going.
Raw role
As a player, Helenius in the NHL of the new era is an interesting breath of the NHL of the old era. Even though the second-generation NHL player who also played in junk country teams is a second-round reservation, in the NHL his job is not to do magic with the game equipment.
Helenius already started moving towards this during his two years in the AHL. An exceptionally bright self-image as a player made it easier to adapt to the NHL. Helenius has not built cloud castles.
– I like to play simple and hard racket. That is what is required of me. I know I’ve never been the smartest guy. I am aware of my own role, so I play a really simple game for sure. I’ve already done it in the AHL, so it came quite easily in the NHL as well, Helenius opens.
The father is not surprised by his son’s development.
– Samuel is an extremely determined guy. He sets the bar really high when it comes to doing things himself. He also knows that he is not a master of the game. He tackles and fights if he needs to.
Fighting is indeed an interesting part of Helenius’ story. In today’s NHL, there are hardly any pure brawlers like in previous decades, but the brawl culture is alive and well.
Helenius, who is almost two meters tall and weighs a hundred kilograms, understood the plot of the couplet already in his first AHL season. When the farm league team’s iron fist was injured, the role fell to the team’s biggest player, Samuel Helenius.
– I understood between the lines that I have to start dropping the gloves. However, I was the biggest guy on that team. Anyway, I knew that there would be jobs like this because I’m big and I play hard. I also understood that it will help me towards the NHL. It has to be done sometimes and I have adopted it, Helenius explains.
It would be easy to draw a straight line from Poika-Helenius’s fighting skills to his father, who played as a defenseman in his own career, who made his own career in the NHL even more emphasized with his fists, but both dismiss the idea. The boy has not followed in his father’s footsteps or asked him for advice on fist fights.
– Samuel and I are just father and son. He won’t accept anything from me. Sometimes, when he was asked to the Jokers C-junnu and I was going to escort him, he asked what the hell are you doing. I said I would come to escort. He said you don’t come, this is my business, the father recalls with a laugh.
Grandma is terrified
In the AHL, Helenius says he fought at least 15 times. There are two fights in fourteen games in the NHL. Something about the vitality of fighting culture in North America is also said by the fact that the Kings have their own development coach for this area as well.
– We have our own skill coach for this side. A guy who has his own martial arts gym. We look at techniques with him. He shows you how to defend yourself or protect yourself, or how to get down to business sensibly if it happens very quickly and spontaneously. This has been a good addition, Samuel praises.
In the past decade, there has been a lot of talk in the NHL about chronic brain injuries caused by repeated concussions. The brain degeneration disease CTE has been found in the brains of many fighters of the past years in post-mortem examinations.
Cerebral degeneration has been studied to cause, among other things, depression and drug addiction.
Helenius does not know how to be afraid in his own work.
– Of course I am aware of what can happen there. Concussions can occur. There are risks, but luckily the helmet also provides some protection. That way you don’t have time to get scared, because the adrenaline jumps so high in an instant.
At home, the father understands all aspects of sports culture, so it’s mostly the female family members who are horrified by his son’s fights.
– I don’t count Samuel in any goon department, but the fights are undoubtedly one of the reasons why he has reached that point. By playing in the NHL nowadays, you still get promoted. I’ve watched those fights and I think he knows how to protect well and has woken up about it. This is how those young people learn, the father praises.
– It’s exciting, but I’ve accepted that you have to fight there. When the parents were watching the boy’s game on Saturday and a fight broke out, the boy’s grandmother, my dear mother, turned her eyes away. He asks why it thinks like that. Papa and I then explain that it belongs to the sport, father Helenius laughs.
From day to day
Samuel Helenius is one of the absolute Finnish surprises of the current season. Few believed that the young hawk breeder would make it to the lineup playing in the NHL, at least not yet. A clear player identity and consistent performance have kept Helenius in the lineup for five weeks already.
Unprejudiced Helenius crumples in the rink, as the coaching wishes, keeps the game simple and does not try to be better than himself. These fins will continue to have a chance to hold on to the playing spot. Finland’s Matt Rempe doesn’t appear in the headlines, but within his own team, he is highly valued.
At the same time, the role is undeniably heavy, time-consuming and carries great health risks. In the role of Helenius, the Finns have only been able to play 652 NHL games in a really long NHL career Jarkko Ruutu.
– The message has come that they like what I do and how I play. Now the goal is to establish a place at the top, so we’re going one day at a time. You never know what will happen, especially when you play with a two-way contract, Helenius concludes.
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