Friday’s SM league round will be followed from 18:00 on Puhe’s Ice Hockey round. Listen to the broadcast here.
It’s time for a traditional game of chairs!
Where does Tommi sit? Shall we take Jouko to play again? Can Ville keep his own chair? Who will be eliminated this time?
The distribution of coaching positions of the ice hockey championship league teams is repeated in the same way from year to year. Fifteen seats are available in the chair game.
The rules of the game are strange. One of the coaches might be sitting on two chairs at the same time. In the present and in the future.
Making art with two stools is not easy. One is owned by the current employer, the other by the one who pays the next season’s salary. And in the spring, the coach may find himself in a situation where he should knock down the team that owns the future chair.
However, the rules of the game never seem to change, so it’s better to settle for studying the outcome this time.
I focus on two, or actually three chairs.
Ville gets to keep his own chair. HIFK announced that it had continued Ville Peltonen contract for two years, although many in sports circles were waiting – even hoping – for a new pilot behind the bench of the Stadion players.
I claim that Peltonen’s extension is excellent news for IFK.
At this point, many people who follow the SM league will point their fingers. “Ville hasn’t achieved anything at HIFK, the screens are almost non-existent”, I hear the imaginary objections in my ears.
And the imagination critics are partially right about that.
With IFK’s resources, anything but a place in the finals is a disappointment. Point.
But Peltonen, like every league coach, operates with the team for which the club’s sports director bears responsibility.
Almost every day a year ago, Peltonese was called for kicks from every direction. I then wrote a comment in which I opened the root causes of HIFK’s problems. The traces did not lead to the head coach, but to the sports management.
Last season, HIFK did not have a group that could have won the championship. It became clear to everyone in the semi-finals at the latest, when Tappara rolled over the people from Helsinki.
It’s also worth remembering that HIFK has been “hobbying about” injuries for a long time. Season after season, an unimaginable number of team players have been found sick. Even Pelto has wondered about that. What has been done wrong on the physics side?
Insider sources say that significant steps in the right direction have been taken in training during Peltonen’s time in red shirts. It bodes well for HIFK.
Peltonen deserves a hat-trick for one of the all-time regular season promotions. Last season, HIFK climbed from last place all the way to the medal games. It can easily be counted as a large sea urchin.
Peltonen, if anyone, is totally committed to the club. According to some, even too committed. But it is known to have one of the basic pillars of success. Longevity.
HIFK won its previous championship in 2011. Before that Kari Jalonen a three-year project. Closer to history there are similar examples, for example Rauma Lukon and Pekka Virran a three-year union. The result is a championship.
The right kind of continuum produces results. If a new coach had been recruited to replace Peltonen, the project would have started all over again.
Sports director of IFK Tobias Salmelainen could now make one of his best decisions.
The problem of two chairs
Tommi got a new chair, but will still sit in the old one until next spring.
Tommi Niemelä made a sensationally beautiful mark last season as coach of Lahti Pelicans. To everyone’s surprise, “Pelsu” made it all the way to the finals. On those screens to Tampere Ilves hired Niemelä to replace the one who escaped to the national team Antti Pennanen.
Niemelä is stuck in Lahti’s chair until the end of this season, but at the same time he is reaching for another ball while building Ilves’ future. And it wouldn’t be a surprise if Pelicans and Ilves met each other in the playoffs. I don’t envy the status of Niemelä’s two chairs.
And I don’t envy Ilve either. Unlike in Peltonen IFK, a completely new era, a totally different project, will start next fall in Ilves.
Niemelä is a coach carved from a completely different tree than Pennanen. Niemelä brings a new coaching philosophy, a new way of playing and a completely new operating culture to Tampere’s current second team.
Long-termism has been far from the chair games of recent years with tassel ears. The stools have sometimes flown to the walls. Joko Myrrä got fired midway through last season. Pennanen was replaced by Pennanen, who therefore leaves for Leijon in the middle of the contract period. It’s about that project. The repeated word between says it all.
Niemelä is one of the rising stars of Finnish hockey coaches, even the brightest of them. You can safely expect a great future for him as a coach. But Ilves fans need – once again – patience.
Under Niemelä’s leadership, Ilves may well reach the championship, but probably only if the job is not left unfinished. Success is not created in one season, as many previous examples amply prove.
It takes three, four or even five years.
Of course, lightning might flash from a clear sky, like in the spring of 2013 in Pori, when Ässät made the impossible possible. But no club can count on that. You can only rely on the right kind of continuum. Exactly as HIFK is doing now.