I do remember his finger thing, but that's only one of many. He was playing for Montreal Canadiens for a long @SS time. They rarely made it to the playoffs. The dude is just not into it, unless it's best on best tournaments. He's buddies with Ristolainen & Laine in their Turku camp and his dad is probably giving him even more ideas not to join. Again just my feeling and logic speaking here, not facts. There's something there for sure. We shouldn't ever dream of him joining a WHC tournament in the future.
WC: Finland 2024 roster talk
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I do remember his finger thing, but that's only one of many. He was playing for Montreal Canadiens for a long @SS time. They rarely made it to the playoffs. The dude is just not into it, unless it's best on best tournaments. He's buddies with Ristolainen & Laine in their Turku camp and his dad is probably giving him even more ideas not to join. Again just my feeling and logic speaking here, not facts. There's something there for sure. We shouldn't ever dream of him joining a WHC tournament in the future.
FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
I would always pick him on our team. No matter how it went in the past. Ristolainen on the other hand should never make the best-on-best team.
I'll keep it mind. From our Finnish ice hockey fans' perspective this screenshot here looks pretty ugly. If there wouldn't be best on best tournaments, his eliteprospects record regarding his national team representation would continue to look like this. Tell me that all of these are injury situations or contract situations. I'm not going to believe it. It's a clear pattern and there are some refusals there for sure. His finger was broken once and that's true, but what about all the other times? Especially when Montreal Canadiens didn't make the playoffs?
Why let him off the hook? He's one of the guys that is showing bad example to other players that refusing is okay. If he's not into national team, why does he join best on best tournaments. I would be okay if him and Ristolainen would stay away. At the same time I'll say that Lehkonen is a really good player, so it does suck.
As the picture tells us, Lehkonen played for Montreal between 2017-2022. In that timeframe, the Habs made the playoffs in 2017 (first round exit), 2020 (second round exit), and 2021 (lost in the SC finals). He was contractless in 2019. So he's declined twice after missing the playoffs during his time with the Habs, both times citing injuries. I guess you can consider that sus if you want, but it's hardly a Risto level performance yet.
As for 2017, he probably could have made it after the quick first round exit, but wasn't a candidate due to Marjamäki's roster politics. Late registered 13 forwards from the get-go, wasted one roster spot on Kukkonen who was injured and unable to play for like half the tournament (he practically hung around on the bench as a dressed-up mascot), and used the final late-addition spot on Pulju, whose career wasn't going downhill yet.
Well, let's see how it'll be in the future. Next two seasons shouldn't be a problem contract wise, but next season I'll forgive him if he declines, because it will be a lot of games for that season. It's for sure that Colorado goes to playoffs next season as well.
He's probably excused for the 2025-26 season, too, thanks to another mid-season practice tournament, this time in Milan, Italy. And in 2027 he will be out of contract again. So the prospects of him making the WHC over the next three years don't look that good either, but he's gonna play some NT hockey anyway.
FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
After Czechs winning I'm even more salty we didn't wait for possible NHL additions.
Well, given the way things went, the only one that looked even remotely plausible was Aho. Of course, he would have been a huge add, but could he have turned it around all by himself?
But let's hope this teaches Pennanen a thing or two about not locking the team down early.
FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
Exactly what I hope. We can't change the past but we can do things better in the future.
Absolutely. We have to return to the old ways and do everything possible to get our best players. We have more top players than ever before so that's another reason to wait. Because of the absence of KHL, Jukka Jalonen's way with locking the team early isn't working anymore.
-The coach should only stamp 6 defenders for the first game of the tournament. If injuries happen or some D-man is absolutely horrible, then you stamp one more defender. These back to back games early on in the tournament against non top countries isn't a problem. Yeah we might loose a group stage point here or there, but in the big picture, it's better to wait patiently and keep the options open as long as possible if the word is such that some of our top players are showing green light. Usually we get two top teams later on in the group stage, which is great for this plan.
-The coach should stamp 12 forwards and that's it. If injuries happen, he may consider stamping one more player, but he doesn't need to. We can run 11 forwards. If one forward is horrible, the coach shouldn't immediately stamp another forward. Instead he can try that forward in another line. The coach has to have good enough vision to select our best players from EHT and other practice games and have a good picture who are the hottest players in Europe, AHL and NHL and then he just has to trust that. It felt like in this year's WHC Jukka Jalonen wasn't sure and it was strange how he wasted some spots with the Jukurit guys and then pushed them aside. It's not normal for him. Maybe he lost it a bit. The 8 wins out of 9 games made him think that we got a team full of winners, but that was done against teams that either weren't top teams or their teams weren't complete. He probably thought he had the 2019 type team, but I just don't get it, because the team was clearly too young. Was this his way of trying to show case everyone that he can win a championship with any team, so he's ready to coach in the NHL?
I think that unfortunately Jukka Jalonen will never coach in the NHL. His english skill isn't bad, but apparently not good enough and Jalonen hasn't proved enough for them as a club team coach, but as a national team tournament head coach he's of course fantastic. My feeling is that from Europe we'll have Grönborg, Jokinen or Ahokas as an NHL head coach at some point and if they succeed there, maybe that will open the gates for more European coaches. Each of these three has very good English speaking skills I'm sure, because they all have lived in NA. Jokinen certainly has the connections in NA as well and has even refused to be assistant coach of Florida Panthers and he's a very good coach. He's my top candidate to be the next European NHL head coach.
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Considering that we'll have a lot of WHC refusals next year because of the four team tournament, I really hope that our new head coach will take a deeper look at the AHL options compared to Jalonen. Sometimes they are stuck in AHL playoffs yes or as some kind of alternates for their NHL organizations, but despite of that, I do remember cases where NHL teams just let their young guns to play in WHC to get experience. There has even been cases where the NHL team lets a player to play for Finland and then that NHL team has the right to call him back to the NHL from the WHC squad.
Jukka Jalonen got so much success without AHL players that he rightfully so pretty much ignored those AHL options and trusted on his EHT core or the previous years' WHC cores. I think that Pennanen & Lehtinen have to do a lot of work and scout our AHL players throughout as well. Ignoring this option in the future is more wasted potential. We should have less Liiga players than we've had in the previous years. Guys like Jormakka really shouldn't play at the WHC level.
ChicagoBullsFan
Registered User
MM-kisat paljastivat karun totuuden Suomi-kiekosta: ”Muuten tulee pirusti turpaan”
Asiantuntija Ismo Lehkosen mukaan SM-liigan taso on pudonnut karmeaa vauhtia alaspäin. Hänen mielestään myös harjoittelu on kivikautisella tasolla.
yle.fi
SM liiga sucks and it's not anymore development league for Finnish NHL draft eligible players.
Well sure. I´m not calling Lehkonen an idiot. But even idiot can see the problem and you need a really really smart people to fix it. Lehkonen does not bring many answers.Do you agree with Ismo Lehkonen in this case? i do.MM-kisat paljastivat karun totuuden Suomi-kiekosta: ”Muuten tulee pirusti turpaan”
Asiantuntija Ismo Lehkosen mukaan SM-liigan taso on pudonnut karmeaa vauhtia alaspäin. Hänen mielestään myös harjoittelu on kivikautisella tasolla.
SM liiga sucks and it's not anymore development league for Finnish NHL draft eligible players.
League was closed almost 25 years ago. The gap between Mestis and Liiga financially is so huge. And even the Mestis teams right now struggles to maintain semiprofessional level. For league teams relegation is automatic bankcrupty. Should there be relegation series from the midseason which cuts for example 4 teams to compete against Mestis teams. Would that interest anyone?
As much as the expansion is the problem I also see that many teams started to see Liiga as development league to NHL. One of the most horrendous examples was/is JYP. Well they got lot of players to NHL contracts and got those NHL pennies, but are they doing financially well now?
Liiga teams main focus should be to compete. Not give young players chance. Young players main focus should be competing from playing spots. Not to get those automatically to be showcased. When they leave Liiga they actually do need to compete from the place in the sun. I understand that money is hard to get, but still I don´t see it beneficial to focus on player development.
SantosHalper
Get off my lawn
Yeah, too many teams, too many games and not enough quality players, therefore not enough competition. And in closed league, bottom tier Liiga teams can sell half of their roster and have financially a + year or +/-0 result at least. Even now, when the league is supposed to be open, it's not really open. Mestis teams cannot afford to buy in, if they by some miracle can win the relegation round. And that's not happening, like you said the gap is too big.
Fixing this mess would require big things to happen, many people suggest 10 teams+10 teams format but i think that would kill the lower levels. Mestis and Suomi-Sarja would become "puulaaki"-leagues, a hobby league. 20 professional teams and rest of them play, if they are interested to play in that specific weekend.
What i would do is a 12 team Liiga and 12 team Mestis. 48 game regular season, everyone plays 4 times against each other. 6 best goes to playoffs, teams 7-10 play playoffs qualifier seriers, 7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th, 2 best advances to playoffs. Teams 11th and 12th first play relegation round 1 and loser plays in relegation round 2 against Mestis champion. And same system in Mestis, relegation round 2 loser plays against Suomi-Sarja champion. And scrap the Liiga stock thing, results in hockey rink should be the only thing that matters. 6 foreign players per team, NA sized rinks and every team should hire skill coaches.
Every game matters. More fast paced, entertaining hockey. That should bring more people to the stands.
hypothetical Liiga:
Tappara
Ilves
Pelicans
Kärpät
Jukurit
IFK
KalPa
Lukko
TPS
Sport
Ässät
KooKoo
hypothetical Mestis:
JYP
HPK
SaiPa
Kiekko-Espoo
IPK
Ketterä
Jokerit
TuTo
Hermes
JoKP
RoKi
Kiekko-Vantaa
Definitely more competition, what we see now.
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