The shouting that takes place during the games has made headlines, but what happens on the edge of the rink and outside of the matches has received little attention, writes Jussi Paasi.
Jussi Paasi sports reporter
The Ice Hockey Championship league is followed this weekend on Puhe’s Ice Hockey Tour. Friday’s broadcast starts at 6 p.m. Listen to the broadcast here.
Recently, there has been talk around the SM league about the use of understyle language in the rink. Lock Tarmo Reunanen made headlines after insulting KalPa Juuso Mäenpäätä.
The phenomenon is not new, because in team games, shouting, shouting intended to destabilize the opponent, is still commonplace. However, the language has improved significantly in the past years and decades.
On the ice, in any case, people are still taunting, insulting opponents repeatedly, in many different ways. Provocation will continue to be a part of hockey. It’s more about what can and can’t be said.
But less, even non-existent, attention has been paid to what is being shouted at the edge of the rink. And now I am by no means talking about the audience.
And I don’t pick on the coaches either. Most of the SM league pilots know how to behave properly towards striped shirts. Only a few of them now focus instead of coaching on the pointless starvation of justice-distributors.
At the end of last season, I heard shocking stories from several sources about how some sports and club directors of the SM League behave towards referees and especially the referees’ assistants.
Low-key insults, direct pressure, sometimes even threats. That’s why club bosses. Compared to those excesses, Tarmo Reunanen’s exasperated speeches are in the kindergarten department.
Of course, I don’t want to stamp the leaderboards of all the league teams now. A large part of them do their work according to society’s normal rules of conduct. But unfortunately, we cannot talk about individual cases. It is an obnoxious phenomenon that has been going on for a long time.
The referees are tried to be influenced in many different ways, especially in the spring, when the stakes in the playoffs increase. Coaches and players are sizzling in the rink, testing their limits. And that’s totally normal.
But far from normal are the verbal vomiting of the sports and club managers in question towards the entire refereeing profession. If you heard a player yelling in the same way, the result would be a really noticeable ban.
For some reason, the referees have been made into spit cups, which you can freely rake over hidden from the public. The phenomenon must be eradicated immediately.
A few weeks ago, I participated in the development days of the Ice Hockey Association. In a lecture there, I heard that more than 300 referees leave the sport every year. The reason, the lecturer said, was that “judges can’t handle that shit”.
It’s a terrifying threat to hockey. No match is played without referees.
In the games of the junior and minor leagues, the biggest insults usually come from the mouths of the coaches, but in the SM league, the few bosses raging behind the scenes should now be disciplined.
Among the league clubs, it is quite well known who I am referring to.