While the NHL blogosphere seems to be gathering more and more momentum, there aren’t too many sources of information on so called international hockey that are accessible for the majority of hockey fans in Canada and the US. I promise to do my best to provide both news and insight about Finnish hockey in forms of aggregation, translations, opinions and maybe even interviews etc.

I realize that SM-liiga as a league isn’t all that interesting through the eyes of North American hockey fans. But they (you?) do care about prospects and former prospects, and there are quite a lot of both playing in Finland every year, so they are going to be the two groups I’m mostly concentrating on.

I’m also on a mission to educate North American hockey fans about the subtleties of Finnish/European/international hockey, so I will also provide information about the most important hockey events in Finland throughout the year, starting with a early silly season (a term which, I believe, is used mostly in Sweden to describe what within the NHL context might be called “UFA hunting season”) summary and review during the next week or so.

Who is this guy then? I’ll skip all the personal/political stuff, because you probably don’t care anyway, and move onto my hockey background. First of all, I’ve never played competitive hockey, unless you count PE classes at school (I would, probably the most competitive games I’ve ever played in any sport). I’ve also never coached or refereed in hockey. (I grew up playing football (soccer), even got a referee’s license at some point, then played basketball for a couple of years as a teenager and started again last fall.)

I have been following hockey with varying intensity since the age of three when I was first taken to a hockey game by my father. Jokerit always was my favorite club and at some point (during my pre-teen years, I think) I started to consider myself a fan.¹ After a brief period of disillosiunment during the late 90′s, I was pulled back to the arenas by something you might call local patriotism (not that I really ever was a patriot of any kind) when I lived in another city.

As an adult, I never felt completely at home in the fan culture. It seemed somehow too immature. Sure, I enjoyed (and still do) the occasional bus trip with the fans to see a road game; chanting, shouting, singing, jumping, drinking, but I also enjoy watching the game from high above the ice, trying my best to actually understand what’s going on, sometimes even getting to the all important question “…and why?”

…So, I ended up joining the staff of the most popular Finnish hockey website, Jatkoaika.com². I had studied journalism briefly, but had never really done any. I enjoy being a Pro-Am journalist, but I’m not sure I’d want to kill my passion doing it professionally. (I have a rather nice day job as a software developer, thanks for asking.)

I probably missed some pieces of vital information, but what the heck, I can always edit this post later. I’m using this same site for other stuff as well, so if you’re only interested in my hockey-related posts, I suggest you subscribe to the category specific feed instead of the main one. If you’re a part of my target audience, please leave a comment about what you’d be interested in (what not so much). Also, if you have found some piece of Finnish text (preferably about hockey) that you’d like translated, I’m here to help.

Footnotes
1. I’ll probably write more about my personal experiences as a Jokerit fan during the late 80′s and early 90′s at some point, even if just to shed some light on Finnish/European fan culture.↑
2.  I think I’ll write more about Jatkoaika (“Overtime”) at some point. I’ve always been one to root for the underdog and the fact that a volunteer-run organization/website can kick the asses of all commercial media, day after day, year after year is quite astonishing, really.↑