It’s that time of year again.
Everyone who follows domestic ice hockey even a little screams loudly. They demanded the opening of the main men’s league, the SM league. The qualifiers must be returned! Sports must be brought to the center! No clearance sales! And so on.
I myself belong to this brave group. I sincerely hope that one fine day I could be relegated from the SM league and be able to get up there. By playing, not by cabinet decisions. I hope that at this time of the year, no team would sell their players, but instead try to strengthen their ranks.
I come from Pori. A man can leave Pori, but Pori does not leave a man. And there’s no way to get hockey out of a Pori citizen. Like a writer Tuomas Kyrö The meaning of Aces for the bear city was so beautifully formulated: “What would Pori be without Aces? Windy crime statistics.”
Why am I talking about my roots here? Because the league qualifiers have been something transcendentally touching for people from Pori who follow hockey passionately.
I was an early teenager when Ässät was relegated from the SM league for the first time. It happened in the spring of 1989. The disappointment was overwhelming. I cried for many days.
The following spring, I cried again for many days. Of joy. Aces rose back to the main series.
In the spring of 2009, Finland, which follows hockey as a whole, lived and breathed to the rhythm of the qualifying series. Ässät and Sport organized an incredible seven-part play, which will be felt as long as club hockey is played in Härmä. Outside of Jyväskylä, not many people can name the Finnish champion of that spring without Googling, but everyone remembers that Kasitien Classic.
Yes, I am an unrepentant hockey and sports romantic. I love the extremes of sports. The stinging defeats, the agonizing tension for a place in the series, the endless and desperate wait for the promotion or even the championship that might come one day. Falling into the canvas and getting up. Is there anything more beautiful?
But. Despite my tearful daydreaming, I’m not at all convinced by the “argument” blaring from all directions, which reads: League open immediately!
No, it shouldn’t be like that. The quick opening of the SM league does not guarantee that everything will change for the better. After all, no one can know for sure what all that would entail.
We need patience now. It is most needed in the SM league office and clubs, when the pressure is increasing all the time.
I believe, at least I hope, that the league bosses, together with the leaders of the Ice Hockey Association, will thoroughly review all possible options. And weigh their consequences.
If the series is opened, what kind of qualifiers should be done? Match series? Or a multi-team qualifying series?
How many teams can fit in the SM league? Fourteen, sixteen or twelve? Or only ten? What about Mesti? What to do with the under 20’s faded series?
Here you could list dozens of open, crucially important questions that need to be thoroughly clarified before any kind of decision is made about the future of the SM League. It’s about the future. Not about whether the qualifiers will be played a year from now or not.
The flagship of Finnish ice hockey cannot be developed short-sightedly. Recent history reminds us of what follows. Sport, KooKoo and Jukurit were promoted to the SM league by quick cabinet decisions after the Jokerit left for Russia. And now everyone thinks there are too many teams in the majors!
Temperance would have been needed then and it is needed now. You have to look ten or fifteen years down the line. What is there to see? What kind of SM league will we have in 2038?
Now the ability of Finnish ice hockey’s decision-makers to think about the famous big picture is being measured. A huge puzzle, where all the numerous pieces are connected, cannot be solved just by hastily returning the qualifiers.
We sports romantics should sometimes stop and think about all the good things that have been achieved with the closed series. They include, among other things, the positive development of the clubs’ turnovers, the stability of operations and a guarantee of continuity. How would the severe closures and restrictions of the corona era have hit the clubs if the SM league was not a closed series?
No matter how I twist and turn the matter in my head, I still stubbornly stick to my original position: I want to see a SM league that you can fall from and rise to by playing. But I can wait so long that it happens thoughtfully, not hastily.
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