The closed series of ice hockey men in a state taxi tackled Juhani Tamminen’s coup, but the last one to vent is Jääkiekkoleijona number 79, writes journalist Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen sports reporter
18:00•Updated 18:42
– Now one Rooster in the heat and in the morning in the yard to ventilate wearing the Lion shirt number 14!
You don’t have to be a very deep follower of Finnish ice hockey to recognize from these clues whose phone such a message came from Kuusamakuja in Turku late last Thursday.
Chairman Heikki Hiltunen had just put into words the message of the SM league’s general meeting in the eagerly awaited media event and announced that the series will open again for the qualifiers from the spring of 2025, after a break of no less than 12 years.
Juhani Tamminen again, it is the Finnish ice hockey people of note who, all these years, has most fiercely flagged for the open series, i.e. the competition that belongs to competitive sports.
Finnish hockey history to the most exciting speeches you can hear the account of Sport’s head coach, who was just millimeters away from a league place, at the Pori ice hall in the spring of 2009. The qualifiers had been stopped for the whole of the 2000s, and Tamminen fanatically ripped “space-taxic puck men”, whom he considered guilty of this sacrilege.
Champion and relegators
For example, the modest masses of people who follow the European football leagues have known for quite a long time that the most interesting things of the season are the champion, the relegated and the promoted. Fortunately, this is also better known in Finnish major league ice hockey.
When the first league qualifying match in the spring of 2025 is played – who knows, between SaiPa and the Jokers – there is only one possible option for the starting puck dropper: Ice Hockey Lion number 79, who seemed to be just a voice shouting in the wilderness in his project.
Hiltunen and the clubs agreed to the presented solution under heavy legal pressure. But the biggest challenges of Finland’s only financially significant professional series are told by the fact that chairman Hiltunen did not progress until 5:36 in his rambling speech.
It was only at that point, after an insanely long prelude in hockey and when the matter had been specifically asked, that such a thing as sport was brought up for the first time at the press conference. Hiltunen admitted that the decision made will bring the desired sportsmanship to the SM league.
Honest talk
The words of an honest man, of course, but yes, sportsmanship and competitive sports at this level should always and every year be elements that are baked into and integrated into the activity, so that they do not have to be searched for in the corners of the office under severe external pressure.
If the main series really wanted to be a top sport, only a maximum of 12 teams would play there. Unfortunately, with this SM league corporate and voting model, such a rational solution seems impossible.
In the spring of 2021, I wrote Ilta-Sanom the closed SM league was torn apart by a column about the Swedish club Rögle, which in the 2000s had played 13 seasons outside the main league and had never won a single playoff series of Elitserien or SHL (the old and new name of the Swedish main league). At that time, Rögle had advanced from the semi-finals to the finals of the SHL.
Stories like this are possible when competitive sports are kept at the heart of competitive sports, not conditions requirements, i.e. extortion by municipalities, license conditions or other things secondary to this ethos, with all due respect.
The text, which was mainly praised, inspired one of the backstage figures of the SM League to call a reprimand, according to which Finland should not be compared to Sweden from this point of view for several reasons.
Only after a call like this do you know that you have to compare without anything else. Let’s see: In the past 30 years, eight clubs have won the championship in the Swedish premier league, whose recent history has included a period in the lower league level. Eight of the 14 teams in the current main league have played lower in their recent history.
Pekka Holopainen
The author is a columnist based in Pori and the only sports reporter who has been selected as Journalist of the Year in Finland.
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