The Ice Hockey Federation should learn from the Czech World Cup tournament, in many ways, writes Jussi Paasi.
Jussi Paasi sports reporter
Sometimes a small, fleeting moment can reveal a surprising amount.
This is what happened in Prague after the bronze medal game of the World Championships. Chairman of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association Heikki Hietanen came to the ice to hand out prizes. His task was to hand the plaque to the Swedish captain To Erik Karlsson.
Hietanen waited for the h-moment with a plate in his hand, looking excited. Then he gave it to Karlsson with a smile.
After that, something confusing happened.
I looked at the situation in disbelief. This isn’t real. From Ville Niemi imitating: You can’t!
Hietanen instructed the NHL legend to lift the award into the air. Look, this is how it should be done now!
The moment was downright embarrassing. It looked like the father was trying to teach his son something that the father himself thinks is really cool. And the son is embarrassed by his father’s stupid passion and lack of understanding.
Hietanen doesn’t seem to know very well the sport of which he is the leading man in Finland. Karlsson should therefore, in Hietanen’s opinion, have raised his upright in straight hands and dashed wildly with it to his team to celebrate… bronze!
Good morning, Heikki!
If the players could have decided, the bronze medal match would not have even been played. Canada and Sweden, which were full of NHL stars, only aimed at one thing here. To the world championship.
There were two extremely disappointed teams facing each other in the bronze match and the game matched it. Let’s quickly get this off the agenda.
In the end, Karlsson’s expressions said it all: he skated with the award plaque straight to the changeover fence and left the post there.
Hietanen’s stylistic mishap underscored what the Jääkiekkoliitto is notorious for: tinkering. In the union, even big problems are used to being swept under the carpet, as in the case of racism a year ago.
Other countries are running away from Finland
The Lions’ World Cup tournament ended in bitter disappointment for the second time in a row. At the same time, Jukka Jalonen’s era as the head coach of the national team ended.
The Ice Hockey Federation is facing a new situation. The Lions’ streak of success has been broken, other big hockey countries have rushed past Finland. Of particular concern is the stagnation of the level of Finnish junior hockey in international games. The medal did not come from the U20 or U18 competitions either.
The first thing to learn about men’s ice hockey is this tournament in the Czech Republic.
It was striking how the big countries of the ladle – with the exception of Finland – were able to attract a huge number of NHL players to these games. The result was accordingly.
The Czech NHL star scored the winning goal in the final David Pastrnak. The guarantors of the silver team Switzerland’s success also came from the other side of the Atlantic, right from the NHL’s brightest peak.
And as stated, Canada and Sweden also had rock solid NHL bundles. So the top four teams had the most famous and best players.
No willing travelers from North America could be found in Leijon, Mikael Granlundia, Olli Määtää, Jesse Puljujärvi and Valtteri from Puusti except for. Out of the four, only Granlund and Määtt properly meet the criteria for NHL status, at least if compared to the Lions’ opponents.
The ice hockey association must find out as soon as possible and very carefully why this happened. Does the national team have enough attraction among the players? Why are other countries ahead of Finland in this too?
The association led by Hietanen should also learn from the competition arrangements and atmosphere. In the Czech Republic, the audience record for the World Cup was broken. The previous record was 741,700 viewers, which was also held by the Czech Republic in 2015.
Here, no one had to explain why the atmosphere was quiet and why the tickets were not sold. If it was necessary, Hietanen would certainly have done the job. He is the master of those explanations. We learned that last spring in Tampere, when Hietanen, who was the general secretary of the games, tried to turn black into white by praising the atmosphere of the Vaisu tournament.
The atmosphere of the World Cup final in Prague was frankly infernal. The hockey nation did its best when the home team marched to the championship.
In Prague and Ostrava, it was startling to notice how Finland has fallen behind in almost everything related to the World Cup. Both in and out of the rink.
A completely new era should start in the ice hockey association, otherwise the future of the dominant sport in Finland does not look rosy. Unfortunately, nothing indicates a change.
But first of all, Hietanen should study the basics of hockey.