2019 world champion Kristian Kuusela, 40, ends his long playing career. He played more than 1,100 matches in the SM league during 21 seasons.
Emma Hyuppa,
Pekka Aalto
The winger of Tappara, who is celebrating the men’s Finnish championship in ice hockey Kristian Kuusela told about the end of his playing career at the gold party.
– Now let’s enjoy this and then do something else. I’ve already made up my mind. I don’t play anymore. Thanks to everyone, Kuusela said.
Captain of the champion team Otto Rauhala caught Kuusela as the first among Tappara’s players to raise the Canada cup with him, even though Kuusela had not fit into the team’s composition after the quarterfinals.
Kuusela, 40, played the last decade of his career in Tappara, except for the 2016-17 season, when he played most of the season in Russia for Amur Khabarovsk. In addition to the KHL, Kuusela played on foreign playing fields in the spring of 2007 in Sweden in MODO Hockey, but the majority of his long career he played in the domestic SM league.
Kuusela played his first matches in the main league in Pori Ässi in the 2002–03 season. He comes from Seinäjoki and got his first ice hockey lessons at S-Kieko.
During 21 SM league seasons, Kuusela played 1,107 regular season matches, in which he scored 280 goals and provided 458 goal assists. Kuusela won five Finnish championships in his career. He won four of them in Tappara and one, in the spring of 2008, in Kärpi.
– This is great. That (championship) is what we try for every year. That’s the most important thing for me here, that you get to see when the guys are happy and enjoying themselves. I get more from it myself, Kuusela said.
Kuusela made it to the Finnish World Cup team for the first time in 2019 and celebrated the world championship with the Lions.