Some Fresh News

Ok, this isn’t the off-season summary/review I promised. Let’s start with some fresh news. First part of the summary later this week, I promise.

It was announced yesterday that the Champions Hockey League season is cancelled due to lack of funding. If I would’ve had this blog a year ago, I could now say “you should’ve listened to me”, but even I didn’t think it would only last a year, when they said they had sponsors who had promised to fund it for three years.

That wasn’t the only setback international club hockey suffered this week, as today the Finnish clubs which were supposed to participate in the pre-season tournament Nordic Trophy announced their withdrawal. Now, instead of playing against Swedish teams, they’ll just play exhibition games against each other (as will the Swedish teams). Good riddance, I say, touting a pre-season exhibition tournament as any sort of “trophy” was so artificial in the first place.

The 2004 9th round pick of the Los Angeles Kings, Valtteri Tenkanen has retired from professional hockey. He has been suffering from various injuries throughout his career and has never been able to play a full season in SM-liiga.

Speaking of late round picks, Juhamatti Aaltonen, the 2003 9th round pick of St. Louis Blues, is heading abroad. The gifted winger has one year left on his contract with Kärpät, but according to Oulu daily newspaper Kaleva they are willing to let him go if they receive some sort of compensation.