TURKU, FINLAND – As SM-Liiga starts on the 16th of September, the Finnish hockey season actually kicked off on the 15th of September with the second highest level, Mestis playing its opening round. The talk of the first games centred around Turku’s second team TUTO.
TUTO lost its season opener to Jyvaskyla’s D-team narrowly 3-4. The real fireworks of the game were not seen on the ice but in the press conference after the game. Usually, one might expect the coaches lay into the referees or other external factors why their team lost, but not TUTO’s head coach Petri Niukkanen.
Niukkanen was not best pleased with the performance of his first line who were on the ice for two set backs including a shorthanded goal. The line, which had former SM-liiga players, must’ve felt embarrassed after the coach called them out in the changing room, but the press conference added further embarrassment to the players.
“Our first line had no class what so ever,” Niukkanen started. “The guys think they’re big shot players, but they can’t play more than one period of hockey because they are so out of shape.”
A relatively honest opening to the comments, but then the real fireworks began.
“The guys are moaning about playing, ice time and about the fact that they are not in the SM-Liiga. Players who play like that have no place in that league,” Niukkanen continued, though with more expletives.
“Our young guys are putting their bodies and lives on the line out there to win a hockey game and then these guys get on the ice and stand there like statues. What happens? We get scored on,” he added.
When asked for an official quote that the press could use, Niukkanen went on to say: “Well, you can write that from tomorrow our first line will start skating themselves back into shape. They’ve obviously had an easy summer, though they’ve been training with us, they obviously haven’t done much else. If you can’t play more than half a game, never start complaining about why you are not playing in the SM-Liiga. That’s what I said to them in the changing room as well.”
The lesson here?
I guess it’s ‘turn up to on ice training in good shape and work hard or else you will feel the wrath of your coach’.
Contact Janne.Virtanen@prohockeynews.com
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