The ice hockey championship league finally opened its series for open, athletic competition.
The series unexpectedly announced that from spring 2025, the winner of Mestis and the last team in the SM League will play in the qualifiers for a place in the SM League.
The enthusiasm for the opening of the SM league is understandable, as it has been long awaited. However, it is possible that the return of the qualifiers will be only cosmetic after all.
It is certain that next season the SM league and Mestis will be the most interesting for a long time. Let’s have a big fight, who stays in the SM league.
Chairman of the Jokers Mikko Saarni already told STT that the club is planning a team of around one million euros for next season, with 10–13 ready league players.
– But of course we have to look at whether our plan is athletically sufficient or whether it still needs to be tightened, Saarni stated.
It sounds like the Jokerit is piling a wild bunch on Mesti. The kind of dream team with which Kärpät once reached the SM league.
The team found an attacker who wreaked havoc in the SM league Jari Laukkanenused to men’s games Niklas Hagman and defenders Harri Aho and Karri Kivi. No fewer than 11 players broke the 30-point mark.
Now the Jokers have a chance to get a tough bunch on their feet and send their own players home. For example Valtteri Filppula could be a good leader for a pack of jokers. Also familiar from Jokers Take Rantakari, Jere Karjalainen and Markus Hännikäinen are without a contract.
If Kiekko-Espoo is accepted into the league, Jokerit is actually the only team that can seriously challenge the last SC league club. It can create a team that will bring sweat cranberries to the foreheads of the leaders of the last SM league clubs.
Thanks to this, many SM league clubs are investing in the 2024–25 season, which will be a tough test for a long time.
After the possible rise of the Jokers, it is difficult to see that any Mestis club would be able to challenge the league clubs athletically in the next few years. The qualifiers may be similar to the years 2010–2013, when the Mestis clubs were nowhere near the SM league.
The economy also poses challenges. At one time, KooKoo and Jukurit paid 1.8 million euros for the league share. For example Iltalehti wrote a year ago according to their informationthat the share price can be up to 3.5 million euros.
SM league chairman Heikki Hiltunen dodged a question about the share price at Thursday’s press conference, stating that he does not have an exact figure for the price, but it can be provided later.
Whether the number is two million or three million, the biggest question is, which clubs other than Kiekko-Espo and Jokerei can afford such sums?
Of course, this brings interest to Mesti. With it, many clubs can increase the number of spectators, the partner network and ultimately their player budget. However, the journey is long, because after Kiekko-Espoo and Jokerien, RoK has the biggest player budget, which is According to the People of Lapland around 190,000 euros.
The most important thing is that, thanks to this, Mestis has the opportunity to dream.
However, the solution does not eliminate the problems of having too many teams. The difference between the small and big teams in the SM league is big financially, and not all teams have enough quality players.
According to insider information, many bigger clubs have already been of the opinion that there are too many teams.
From the point of view of smaller clubs in the SM league, the solution is understandable. Hardly any of them wants to be the only one in a series where there are no opportunities to run nearly the same type of business.
However, you can wait for the next season with water on your tongue. If the Jokers’ chances for the SM league start to look good, I don’t think that the club could open its wallet and slip away from its player budget of one million euros.
If and when the Jokerit finally arrives with its fans in the qualifiers, the opponent’s players will also have a lot of pressure on their necks. Then, with a very high probability, we can see a qualifying series as delicious as in the spring of 2009.
It is remembered by Sport’s fans, Juhani from Tammis and a heady seventh game.
The SM league has been looking for these stories. We have to hope that it won’t remain a big show of one spring.