The Ice Hockey Federation confirmed on Thursday that Antti Pennanen replace Jukka Jalonen after this season as the head coach of the Finnish men’s national ice hockey team.
With the second coach of Pikkuhuhakaci and the academy coach of the Polish club Stal Rzeszow With Gert Remmel47, has a close friendship with Leijoni’s new head coach Pennanen, 44, dating back years.
Remmel’s path has taken him from Estonia to Finland to the coaching teams of HIFK and FC Honga’s representative teams, football lessons to Lisbon and through Italy to the academy of Pafos FC in Cyprus, to NK Novigrad in Croatia and now most recently to the Stal Rzeszow club in Poland, where he works as a kind of coaching manager, academy pilot for young clubs .
Estonian football coach Remmel says that he first met Pennasi, who signed a 2+1-year contract as the Lions’ head coach on Thursday, in 2010, when he coached HPK’s A-juniors.
– I was working at Honga at the time. Antti and a couple of his coaching friends came to see how the club works. It was a time when there was a lot of talk about the playbook across the board. We were both game book people. That’s how the friendship started.
For years, the coaching duo of different sports had a lot to do with each other. Both have been united all along, especially by the fact that the duo seeks a competitive advantage in their sport with great heart and passion.
While in Italy, Remmel had Pennanen as a guest at his home, who followed the football activities closely for several days with a notebook tightly in his grip.
– In Italy, Penna was very interested in even micro-technical matters. I remember very well that he was particularly interested in how to make attacks go faster in football. I believe that he replicates this in his own hockey activities, Remmel tells Urheilu.
Pennene has endless curiosity
According to an Estonian friend, Pennanen’s curiosity has always been endless. Pennanen asked about detailed football matters and always wanted to know or find out where a certain matter always leads.
– After all, certain sports dynamics, the margins of winning and losing, are accentuated in certain sports where there are a lot of struggles on the field, such as hockey, football and basketball. The logic is pretty much the same for everyone, even though the game tool is different.
Pennanen is by no means the only acquaintance of Gert Remmel across sports boundaries, as the Estonian futs pilot says that he is also in close coaching sessions with the basketball pilot who coached the German team Bonn to the Champions League winner last spring Tuomas Iisalon with.
– I haven’t been in such close contact with the successful ice hockey coach Jukka Jalonen, but whenever I have a question or I’m stuck, I know I can call Jukka as well. He always helps or at least listens, says Remmel.
Remmel says that he has been in very close contact with Penna for a long time, but in the last couple of years he has had less contact than before. Both of them have had their own busy schedule and they’ve maintained their friendship with a few text messages.
– Antti has always had a clear need to learn something new and has always been very curious. When I used to deal with Anti on a daily basis, there wasn’t a single thing that he couldn’t open up to me.
In his speech, Remmel reinforces the perception that Pennanen is truly a daring bat innovator and a brave game developer living up to his reputation.
– If Antti learns about anything, it’s always a proper learning – never a superficial caress. When he is interested in something, he always goes deep into it.
– His strengths include, without a doubt, the ability to know how to prioritize things. A coach cannot do everything alone. If I can say this as an outsider, then in order of importance he has developed both as a coach and as a person. He separates the important from the less important, Remmel knows.
Remmel says that there is a filter between him and Pennanen, because the two are in no way competing with each other for jobs.
– We get to vent honestly about things to each other and gain a wider field of vision about them. It’s only healthy that we have a slightly different sports culture, the environment is different and we have a big network behind us. This gives a lot.
The 2019 HPK champion coach has had “right” people around him during his career since Jukka Jalos. Remmel emphasizes that no coach can do miracles alone.
– Antti has had a brainstorming environment where he has also been at the cutting edge of the sport, i.e. hockey, all the time. This “brainstorming thing” is always significant in terms of development, Remmel sees.
The pressure to succeed as the Lions’ head coach
Remmel emphasizes that Pennanen has prepared himself well in terms of success and possible stressors.
– Of course, this is influenced by life experience, just like civil matters. I believe that even Jukka Jalonen as a world champion and Olympic champion was not the same person as when he started as Ilves’ pilot in 1992–1995, Remmel points out.
Remmel believes that no coach is ever fully prepared for what is coming in the form of a new coach.
– We really don’t know what’s coming. A person either adapts to the new task description or not. Today, criticism is like a tornado even in marginal matters of coaching. I personally see that there is no way to prepare for this. I’m sure the people who hired Pennanen have done a proper screening to see if he’s capable.
Remmel knows that in Finnish sports, being the head coach of the Lions is the most difficult of all if things don’t go well.
– However, in the case of Pennanen, the probabilities that he will adapt are greater than that he will not adapt. Afterwards, it’s easy to always play expert, but after watching Antti’s coaching and doing, I can say that it was only a matter of time before he was appointed to a similar position, such as the head coach of the Lions.