FINLAND – SM-Liiga is set to have a quiet round. Well there are games taking place, but the hype and the buzz is localised to Helsinki where the Minnesota Wild and Carolina Hurricanes will be opening the NHL regular season. The capacity crowd at Hartwall Arena will surely include fans from around Finland, which will leave those who couldn’t secure a ticket to the game or thought watching the local teams play was a better option than forking out over a €100 on a ticket alone to cheer on the local clubs. Many have criticised the decision to host SM-Liiga games at the same time when all the attention will be around the NHL season opener.
In the recent rounds the league has seen somewhat of floodgates opening for the teams as HIFK beat Assat by a whopping score of 11-3. Don Cherry would’ve said something about hockey gods and not to humiliate your opponents like that. In the game Assat had a bit of a goalie roulette going with the starting keeper Eero Kilpelainen being replaced by Juha Jarvenpaa for the second period. Unfortunately for Kilpelainen his tenure in net was short lived as HIFK put two goals past him in a minute and a half; after this Kilpelainen was sent back on the ice. All in all a woeful night for Assat, but interestingly all but five HIFK players were left without points in the game.
Even though the eyes of the hockey world will be transfixed on the Hartwall Arena, there will be history made in the SM-Liiga as Jan Latvala of the Pelicans will play his 900th SM-Liiga match. Latvala is only the second player in the SM-Liiga history to have played 900 games during his career. The record is currently being held by Erik Hamalainen, who played 1001 SM-Liiga games during his time in the top league. The 37 year old Latvala is the only active player with a realistic chance to break Hamalainen’s record.
“I’ve got a long way to go to break Erik’s record, though when you put it in perspective, it’s only a few more seasons” Latvala said in a statement. “Surpassing the 1000 game mark and breaking Erik’s record is a goal of mine. However I’ve got a 101 games to go till then, so I’m not thinking about it at this stage”
Pelican’s Head Coach Mika Toivola wanted to congratulate Latvala on his achievement: “Playing 900 career games in the SM-Liiga is a staggering number of games! The older and more experienced Jan gets, the better he plays.”
Pelicans received some help up front when the team announced last week that they had agreed terms with former NHL forward Mike York. York’s presence has been felt on the ice and off the ice as he remarked about Pelicans’ assistant coach Pasi Nurminen “Yeah I remember him. I’m more used to putting pucks behind him though.” Nurminen used to play for the Atlanta Thrashers and their paths crossed a few times during their NHL careers.
In other signing news, JYP have signed Eric Perrin, who used to play for Atlanta Thrashers and was invited to the Tampa Bay lightning training camp. JYP had a preliminary agreement in place with Perrin in that he would sign for JYP if he failed to secure a one way agreement with Tampa Bay. As this did not happen, Perrin put pen to paper and will be dressing for the Hurricane against Pelicans on Wednesday (7th of October).
TPS also acquired some further NHL aid to its blue line by signing former Atlanta Thrasher, Steve McCarthy. McCarthy will reinforce TPS defence that is missing Miika Huzckowski (out for the season) and Garret Raboin (3-4 months). TPS will be in action again and will try to end its eight game losing streak and head coach Heikki Leime will surely want to get another W in the teams stats. TPS has won once in its opening game against HPK but After nine games TPS points tally stands at 3.
Where many might think Leime would be the first head coach to lose his job, the betting company BetFair has said that it is more likely that Jokerit coach Hannu Jortikka is the one to lose his job first. Given the quality in Jokerit roster, it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if Jortikka fell to a panic firing in-order to wake up the team. At the moment Jokerit is 10th in the league and has underperformed given the expectations set on the team.
Youth talent and Player Of The Month:
In the recent games Assat have unearthed one of the most interesting young talents for this year in the 17 year old Joel Armia. At the time of writing, Armia has played five games at the SM-Liiga level and has gathered impressive stats by scoring twice and assisting on two other goals. Though the season is young it is too early to start talking about a super-star talent, but Armia has certainly made an explosive start. It is rare for such a young player to put up numbers this good in the top flight of Finnish hockey. The 192cm tall forward has already been playing in the first offensive unit and has impressed many in the league.
The final news item worth noting from the SM-Liiga is that HIFK’s Ville Peltonen has been named as the Player of the Month for September by SM-Liiga and Jaakiekko Lehti (The Finnish ice hockey bible). In nine games in September, Peltonen scored four times and assisted on five others.
The standings as of 7th of October (does not include results from the days games)
1. JYP 8 19
2. HIFK 9 18
3. Lukko 8 15
4. Ässät 8 15
5. Tappara 8 14
6. HPK 8 14
7. KalPa 9 12
8. Blues 7 11
9. Pelicans 7 11
10. Jokerit 8 11
11. Kärpät 8 10
12. SaiPa 8 9
13. Ilves 9 9
14. TPS 9 3
Contact: Janne.virtanen@prohockeynews.com
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