Sixth of January 2016. 01.30 am.
It’s eighteen degrees below zero in Helsinki. I’m standing in a suit and tie on the corner of Mannerheimintie and Kalevankatu, in front of the door of a hamburger restaurant. After all, there is a winter jacket over the suit, but the cold and wind bite like hell.
I’m waiting for someone to come and open the door. After a couple of phone calls, the spokesman for the Young Lions Sami Nuutinen finally letting the reporter and cameraman in.
We had already agreed before the final of the under-20 World Cup tournament that if Finland wins the gold, we will get to make a short video about the championship celebration. My employer at the time, Ilta-Sanomat, was the Jääkieksoliito’s media partner.
Tieto had not gone further than Nuuti in the Ice Hockey Association. It quickly became clear. We descended with the cameraman down the Kierportataat, a place in Puri. There was a sauna room on the basement floor, where the world champion team started their party.
The team leader walked in first Brother Pekka Ketola. “Vellu” wondered why media representatives were afraid to attend.
He followed Ketola Jukka Jalonen. Jalonen was not satisfied with wondering. He got angry, raised his voice and used strong words. It was understandable, because no one had told Juka or anyone else that we were coming to film the party.
After quite colorful twists and turns, I managed to arrange things in the end so that a twenty-second party video was filmed.
Why am I telling you about the events of more than eight years ago? Because that’s when I learned for the first time how to work with Jalonen.
And the ultimate reason for writing this article is, of course, that Jalonen is one of the best coaches in the history of Finnish ball sports. If not the best.
I have followed Jalonen’s coaching career during several prestigious competitions, starting with the 2016 junior competitions. Before that, I got to know him when Jalonen worked as an IS expert. I don’t know Leijonakinga particularly well, but through my work I have seen, heard and experienced a lot of things that seem appropriate to open now that Jalonen’s wash in Leijon ended.
Jalonen’s legacy is massive. A whole book should be written about it. I hope we will write. It is about such a remarkable and extraordinary character.
The Rise and Fall of the Gold Machine
The gold machine, from the opponents’ point of view the hell machine, was Jalonen’s lofty creation. It conquered everything that could be conquered. World championships and Olympic gold.
Direct sports miracles happened under Jalonen’s leadership. Personally, I consider the biggest of them to be the World Cup gold from 2019. At that time, the Lions traveled to the Slovakian Games with the worst team of all time. And in the playoffs, they defeated Sweden, Russia and Canada, who were wild with NHL stars.
It was a dazzling display of the power of the gold machine. The group of league players played a perfect underdog game that brought the opponents to the brink of rage. You can’t do that – you can’t! – to play hockey, was the verdict of the losing parties.
From then on, for four years, not a single opponent was able to crack Jalonen’s code.
Until spring 2023 came.
Why did that superior machine freeze up at last year’s World Cup and continue to cough this spring in the Czech Republic?
I believe the answer can be found in the Ice Hockey Association and Jalonen’s ice skills.
Let’s start with the Ice Hockey Federation. With the championships, Jalose became bigger than the association. That shouldn’t have happened. Even Jalos should have had someone to guide his actions. Someone he reports to. Someone who requires renewal, constant development.
Not from the ice hockey association Kalervo Kummolan no leadership has been found since leaving. Finnish hockey will have to pay a heavy price for that in the next few years. But that’s a whole other story.
Jalonen simply got too much power. A union blinded by gold medals raised him above all estimation. No one questioned what he did. Not in hockey or outside of it. When Jalonen wanted to jump in by Alexander Stubb to the election campaign, it was allowed to happen just because of that.
The gold machine was also turned off by the unconditionality of the Lion King. The Lions of Jalonen played, practiced, camped, did absolutely everything year after year with the same formula. And with almost the same coaching group. It produced results for a long time, but the operation and especially the gameplay should have been renewed, new views should have been brought in. Jalonen stubbornly trusted the old recipe.
The formula became familiar to the opponents in the rink a year ago. There was no longer a chance to play. This spring, the funeral of the golden machine was already celebrated in Prague, despite the orderly match against Sweden.
The Lions didn’t beat any ice hockey powerhouse. It says everything essential about the Games that without Great Britain’s shock victory over Austria, Finland’s games would have ended in the preliminary series.
Perhaps the most illustrative example of Jalonen’s stubbornness can be found a year ago. At the time of the World Cup in Tampere, it seemed that Jalonen wanted to fuck us astute journalists, when we “instructed” in our stories to put Mikko Rantanen and Kaapo Kako to the same chain.
We sang the same song day after day in the choir: friends Rantanen and Kakko together, now! Even for one of the games in the first series. But no. Of course, Jukka didn’t deviate from his own plan, even though the game slowed down. He insisted that they play in the first chain Sakari Manninen, Teemu Hartikainen and Rantanen. Point. You journalists can have a good time there.
In the final moments of the quarterfinal match against Canada, Jalonen let the NHL millionaires from Turku into the same chain. Some kind of ice coldness record too.
Jalonen hung on to his extremely controlling game template for too long, and did not agree to mold it even after last spring’s disappointment. That was probably one of the reasons why several NHL players did not find their place in Jalonen’s national team. And an explanation for why many people didn’t come to Leijon.
Despite everything, I somehow appreciate Jalonen’s stubbornness. When he has decided something, then we act accordingly. Went to kindle or clay. There are far too many decisions left unmade in this world. It is better to make the wrong decision than not make a decision at all.
Bumps if he feels like it
It must have become clear to everyone that Jalos is not interested in how one should behave in interviews. He says exactly what he thinks.
He is always himself in front of the media. Jukka from Riihimäki, moro. Jörö-Jukka often steps in front of the camera and pokes if he feels like it. And it often seems to feel that way. The Lion King growls when he wants to.
For journalists, Jalonen’s way of being and acting is of course pure gold. Direct statements rain down, blunt statements flood in, headlines are created by themselves. Even the meme makers thank you.
With Jalonen, you never know what’s in store. What leg might Jukka be on today? It was speculated again among the journalists at the World Cup tournament in the Czech Republic. Sometimes relaxed, after the next workouts again tight like a violin string.
In Prague, Jalonen gave a parade example of his procrastination. Mightily Jussi Saarinen the interview he did became an instant classic.
“Better than you. So damn good.”
Perfectly suitable as a slogan of Jalonen’s era.
Trust is the most important thing
The biggest thing for Jalose seems to be trust. I got a perfect example of that at the time of the golden jubilee reported at the beginning.
I promised then, that is, on the sixth of January 2016, in the middle of the night, to the master coach, that everything would be alright. I get the players to play the “Finland is the new world champion” verse and then we quickly leave the place with the cameraman. No beer cans are visible in the pictures.
Jalonen was really suspicious. But when it worked as agreed, trust was born between us.
Since then, Jalonen has always answered my phone calls when I have sought him out for an interview. Or if he hasn’t answered, he’s called me back. It is not a given, because as I already said, we are not friends or even friends. And it is, after all, Jukka Jalonen.
The importance of trust is also easy to see in Jalonen’s relationship with players and player choices. Only and only hockey players that Jalonen could fully trust were selected as the strollers of the golden machine.
No soloing was allowed in the collective. No, even if it was an NHL star. Jalonen didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Manninen, Hartikainen, Anttila, Pesonen, Lehtonen. And so on. Always the same reliable men who knew the operating principles of the machinery to the last minute and operated as it required. No differential exemptions were known.
Now Jalonen’s work at Leijon is over. The dull final result in two consecutive springs does not dim the Lion King’s achievements one bit. He will stand until the end of his life on an additional podium built on top of the nation’s cabinet. Totally deserved.
But at the same time, Jalonen’s time in Leijon reminds us of the necessity of renewal. Without constant change and development, even a golden dynasty may end quickly.
The future head coach of the Lions Antti Pennanen can no longer rely on the gold machine to be moved to the hockey museum. Time has passed it by. Jalonen tore everything possible out of it.
The evolution of ice hockey is now raging somewhere else.
Pennanen has to create something new. Just as Jalone once created.