Jari Kurri, what should you be paid for, asks journalist Jussi Paasi.
I am writing to you for the first time.
We have met professionally, but I don’t think you remember those encounters.
I remember you from childhood. You are handsome in the posters on the wall of my room. In the 1980s, in an Edmonton Oilers jersey. Together Wayne Gretzky with.
You were a hero to me and many others. The star of the fabled NHL.
I’m writing to you now because I can’t understand what’s going on in your head. Not many others understand either, because you don’t agree to tell the Joker’s situation publicly.
You thoroughly embarrassed yourself three years ago when you became the owner, or rather the “owner” of Jokers. You said that Jokerit will be transferred to 100% Finnish ownership, i.e. into your hands.
It soon dawned on everyone that the Russian oligarchs were still running the business, this time through the Norilsk Nickel group, and offset the club’s losses of tens of millions of euros.
I thought so myself, but I was wrong.
Now it looks like you’re holding the Jokers hostage. You have an agreement with Jokerit ry, which entitles you to use the club’s name and logo.
Jari, you don’t need Joker’s name or logo for anything anymore. I’m sure you know that very well yourself. Still, you refuse to give them up. of IS according to the information (you will switch to another service) you want half a million euros for those rights.
If so, what should you be paid for?
Is it because you were a puppet in the most shameful operation in Jokeri’s club history, where the classic brand of Suomi kiko, loved or hated by everyone, was turned into an instrument of Russia’s soft power use?
This was clear to many from the beginning. This is what the Joker’s credit player, among others, said after the game ended Jesse Joensuu.
The Joker’s KHL tour ended in war. The Ilmala arena was closed.
Jari, you were part of the Russian PR machine. You even belonged to the board of the KHL. You were paid an annual salary of about half a million euros for a company that made losses of about 10 million euros per season. The money came from a Russian group.
What do you need another half million euros for?
Jari, if you wanted to save even a shred of your badly tarnished reputation, you would go public and say that you would hand over the rights to use Jokeri’s name and logo free of charge, so that the traditional club can be rebuilt.
After that you should tell the truth. The truth about your role in Jokers. The truth about everything connected to the KHL pattern. An apology wouldn’t hurt either.
All of that would require exactly the kind of heroism that graced my wall more than three decades ago.