Liiga is everywhere. We’re being bombarded with TV ads. I heard at least 6 ads on the radio in the commute to school and back this morning. Today Liiga starts. You’d have to be deaf and blind not to know it, even not speaking Finnish.
Liiga, of course, is Finnish professional hockey league. It’s relatively small compared to the NHL, the level is lower as the economics of a nation of 5.8 million people would dictate, but in Finland it is a titan. It is THE sports league in a sports-crazy country. It feels like the start of the NFL season today.
I’m just two years older than Liiga, which started in 1973 as SM-Liiga—SM=soumenmestaruus, or “Finnish Championship”; liiga = league) until the SM was dropped in 2013 and branded, simply, Liiga. Unlike a lot of national pro club sport leagues around the world, it is essentially a closed league. No current system allows for clubs below the Liiga level--“Mestis” is the next highest club league below--to jump up into the 15-team Liiga, based on relegation of the bottom team down to Mestis. This was tried for three years from 2010 to 2013 but Liiga closed again and has been a closed system since.
If you’ve watched Sunderland ‘Til I Die on Netflix, you’ll get what I’m talking about. Suffice it to say, no Liiga team’s fan base nor club ownership at the moment faces demotion from Liiga, which under the circumstances must feel like a relief to most if not all teams. The economic forces of team support and ticket sales are the only thing fans and owners need to concern themselves with, taking some of the gut-wrenching losing record season angst, common with football clubs around the world, completely out of the equation. Teams can be added, however, to Liiga on appeal and consideration of a committee, the details of which seem to be more secretive than I’m willing at the moment to chase down.
Finland is an ice hockey country. A country roughly the population of Minnesota, continues to feed players to the NHL at a high rate—especially goalies as of late—while holding its own in international play at the Olympics and World Championships. Finland has won 6 Olympic medals (silver in 1988, & 2006; bronze in 1994, 1998, 2010 & 2014) and has won the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championships three times, one more than the United States. A quick google search says there are 49 active Finnish players in the NHL. That ranks them 5th in players by nationality, one fewer than Russia in 4th and 16 more than the Czech Republic in 6th.
While most Finnish National Team successes have relied on NHL-level talent, Liiga has done an amazing job of delivering competitive Finnish teams to the world stage, often against far more talent-laden foes. Certainly larger rinks in the international game making skating and passing paramount while diminishing the role of physicality (checking) and player size (space to move without getting checked), as well a consistent team-style of orchestrated play, has helped Finland succeed in National Team settings. But Liiga’s club structure’s effect on player development can’t be dismissed either.
With the 2020 IIHF worlds cancelled in May due to Covid-19, Finland still stands as reigning world champions with their 2019 title, one amazingly achieved with only 3 NHL players, though Kaapo Kakko would soon after leave Turku’s TPS—the club of Saku and Mikko Koivu—and be drafted by the New York Rangers as the second pick of the 2019 NHL draft. He garnered that coveted spot largely due to his amazing play at those worlds.
To win the gold, the Leijonat (Lions—the national coat of arms) went through Russia in the semifinals with a venerable who’s who of Russian NHLers—13 in all, with the remainder of the squad coming from Russia’s KHL league, arguably the second most competitive and lucrative in the world. They won the gold over Canada with all 25 players—every single player--active NHLers. To be fair, the world championships may not seem like nor in fact be as big a big deal to a full roster of NHLers on lucrative contracts, but seriously, 3 NHLers v. a full roster of them?! And if you think Russia doesn’t care whether or not Finland beats them at the world championships, you don’t know any Russians, or Finns for that matter! No matter how you slice it, that title is noteworthy. The 3-1 victory in the final caused a Finnish journalist to quip on twitter that those 25 Canadian NHL players are almost good enough for Liiga.
Finland has a history of “sisu” —great intestinal fortitude—when national pride is on the line, but sisu alone doesn’t deliver players with that kind of ability in a championship setting. A really great club system of development does, and Liiga is the manifestation of that system. Each world championship victory has led to a national frenzy of celebration. That helps too.
JYP (pronounced Yip) is our local piece of that player development system. It’s not terribly unlike Minnesota, though the club development is continuous, very much more of a system with clear steps and manifestations. They don’t break out and play for high school teams and club teams on the side. They develop in the flow of national development stream and break out when they clearly can and should “play up.”
One of the things I think is cool in Finland is the potential cradle-to-grave club structure, but also, a relatively free market for highly talented athletes to have elite pathways up and support structures back down in the life of a hockey player. Two hockey stories currently making headlines here exhibit what I’m talking about, and both hit close to our household,
Mikko Koivu is practically a Minnesotan. His long-standing career with the Minnesota Wild ended last week as his contract was not renewed. In Minnesota, Koivu is one of us. He feels like Minnesota royalty. After 15 seasons, he’s "our” captain. But what Minnesotans don’t realize is Mikko is first and foremost, from Turku. His deepest roots and loyalties are probably with TPS—Turun Palloseura—which literally means Turku Ball Club. I know, confusing right? I mean the logo even has a basketball in it. But THAT’S even wrong because what looks like a basketball is actually a 1920’s soccer ball. TPS was started in 1922, so it has roots, and it’s basically the city of Turku’s premier sports club that is embedded in soccer, and just happens to have added a hockey team that has churned out some great players. Now it is arguably hockey that is the premier TPS team.
To get to the point, the conjecture here is whether or not Mikko Koivu will come back and play for TPS, now that Minnesota set him free. Which seems absurd, right? I mean, you’ve got a guy who just lost his contract to play hockey that was worth millions, and his home Liiga fans really seem to expect him to WANT to play for TPS for a pittance comparatively? The gist here is, will the gravitational pull of TPS bring Mikko home, over trying to grab a much more lucrative albeit tenuous spot elsewhere in the NHL?
Headline two days ago in Finland’s Ilta Sanomat newspaper was, “See You Mikko Koivu at TPS? “ The general manager and Koivu seem to have at least discussed him returning to Turku, though the GM said they can’t afford an NHL salary. That’s an understatement. Their entire player salary budget of €2,040,000 might fall a tad short indeed, like not enough for a single NHL player of any caliber. But the GM was quoted as saying he didn’t think this was an economic issue. Yeah, to say the least. Think Mikko’s roots are deep in Minnesota? Think again, especially if he plays for TPS this season!
Kids get to essentially identify with their Liiga pros as part of “their club.” It’s really cool and implies where Mikko Koivu might have the heart to return to Turku. Iita plays in the JYP U10 Team. She wears essentially the same logo, and is truly in the same club as the JYP Liiga players. As a team member she gets free passes to all JYP Liiga games (!!!). Boy do we love that! I can only imagine how real it might seem to a kid to be able to access the highest levels of sports when players in your club have done it. And the marketing is elicit. Jyväskylä natives Sami Vatanen in a Ducks uniform and Olli Määttä in a Penguins kit, grace the wall leading to the JYP club locker rooms asking “who will be next?”
The big deal for JYP on this opening Liiga day is 16 year-old, Brad Lambert. The dual Finnish/Canadian citizen is the son of a Saskatchewanian father and Finnish mother, with hockey pedigree in his bloodline. Lambert’s uncle is a former NHLer and current assistant coach with the New York Islanders. The gripper is, Brad, despite his Canadian citizenship, has lived and played pretty much all his hockey in Finland.
Lambert’s recent moves and subsequent excitement here in Jyävskylä as a teenager pegged as one 2022’s top NHL prospects, exhibits the mobility of a young player on a rapid trajectory to the top. He played in the Lahti Pelicans club as a kid and youth where he stood out. Last season, at 15 years old, he signed a 2-year contract with Helsinki IFK club. After one season in Helsinki, he was reportedly not happy with the amount of responsibility he was being given and exercised an option in his contract to transfer to JYP for this season, to Jyväskylä’s good fortune.
Lambert’s draw to JYP fans and Liiga itself, is real too. He is already one of the national storylines of the Liiga season. One risk of being a lazy blogger is asserting you know more than you do. I am no hockey scout but I have watched a lot of hockey in my lifetime. That’s my only qualification for the following analysis. So take it for what it is.
A little over a week ago, we went to JYP’s second pre-season game against the 2020 Mestis League runners up, Keupa. I knew nothing about Lambert nor any of the players. Mimmu knew about him but nothing in-depth. She asked us in the first period who our favorite player was so far, and I picked a veteran. But as the game moved on and JYP loosened up, Lambert started to stand out. By the end, it was unanimous in the family who we liked.
I remember going to see this kid from my high school named Matt Niskanen play for Virginia in the section 7 finals at the DECC in Duluth. I had heard the hubbub about him as a quarterback in American football when he led Mountain Iron-Buhl to the State Football Tournament. He was obviously kind of good at hockey too and making a stir. His presence on the ice at that age in a high school game almost felt ridiculous. He was a man among boys. I got to see more when he came to play for the UMD Bulldogs, and while not as obvious as in the high school game, Niskanen still looked like a man among young men. It was clear he was the best player on the ice most nights and as a defenseman, really had a knack and sense for controlling the game, even at that level. It was pretty clear he was going to the NHL, which he did after 2 seasons in college, and went on to win the Stanley Cup with Washington..
In a pro league of some repute, among grown men who have played perhaps at this level longer than they’d preferred, or not long enough, Lambert had three assists that afternoon. He glided, moved around the scrums, and slid around the ice with a huge amount of grace and elegance that nobody else on the ice quite had. I had no idea he was just 16. In fact, unlike Niskanen, this boy among men had very little physical presence at all. He was kind of small. But I had a similar feeling watching Lambert in the waning part of the JYP game as watching Niskanen, probably more akin to when he was with the Bulldogs. But considering Lambert at 16 is giving off even close to that impression amongst players in a league that produced the 2019 World Ice Hockey Champions, that’s a pretty big impression for a 16 year old.
The 2-hour JYP Liiga season preview show on central Finland radio featured Lambert prominently. He’s exciting. In a Covid world, people need their sports heroes. Iita’s hockey club has a star, and we’re all for it. It is making the winter more exciting for us already.
Finland has never had a first pick in the NHL draft. Patrik Laine went second in 2016, and it looked like Kaapo Kakko might crack that nut in 2019 with his phenomenal play to bring “Poikka” (literally “the boy” but referring to the world championship trophy) home to sauna, but alas, he went second as well, to the chagrin of many Finnish hockey fans, I think.
Now Finland again has a Finn, developed in Finland with a chance. Perhaps with a name that might not elicit pronunciation anxiety in American and Canadian NHL front offices, Finland will get their #1 draft pick yet. Like Laine and Kakko before him, Liiga, at least in part, will help decide.