Janne Pesonen has been appointed as the club’s sports director. Alexander Sneen will become CEO, and Ville Peltonen will continue as head coach.
10:34•Updated 10:52
Helsinki IFK makes significant changes to its management team. The club’s sports director has been appointed Janne Pesonen and youth development coach Kari Kalto. The new CEO is Alexander Sneen.
In addition, HIFK announces that it is establishing an expert group to develop the competitiveness of its sports strategy. They belong to the group Jarmo Kekäläinen, Mikael Granlund, Henrik Dettmannand as the chairman of the group Mika Kortelainen.
Ville Peltonen continues as the team’s head coach.
Chairman of the board of HIFK Jaakko Eskola justifies the changes with poor success that has been going on for longer. According to him, seven candidates were candidates for sports director, three of whom were still in the final stage.
– We recognize that Pesonen is inexperienced as a sports director, but at the same time he has enormous experience in building a winning culture. In addition, he receives a really strong level of support in the beginning, Eskola commented.
– It is good to recognize that the sports director is not only a player watcher, which of course is also important. He is a comprehensive leader of top sports and the culture that supports it, from juniors to the representative team. The depth of Pesonen’s thinking was clearly the most ambitious.
Pesonen, 42, is one of the most successful ice hockey players in Finnish history. He has won the world championship, the KHL championship, the Swedish championship, four Finnish championships and played in the NHL for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
– HIFK has been the subject of heavy criticism in recent years. Some of it is appropriate, but I feel that it has been unfairly targeted at one person, says Pesonen.
It has been 13 years since HIFK’s last Finnish championship. Before Pesos, he was the club’s sports director Tobias Salmelainen for more than six years.
– Challenges are never caused by a single person in the same way that success is not due to one person. I start by talking and after that we look for improvement points together. There is a lot of talent in the team, but it needs to be brought out better, Pesonen states.