mattihp
Registered User
I would be scared to see what he could do with a France or Kazakhstan.
Jukka Jalonen appreciation thread
- Thread starter Eye of Ra
- Start date
It's result driven business and Jalonen did very well and deserves ton of credit.
But his coaching style and methods did harm Finnish youth hockey. All coaches started to mimic his style what is very well suited on big ice WHEN you have worse players than other team. But it hurts young players when all they can do is just wait and play passive.
Very passive, slow, defend the middle of ice with all five players. It is very boring and Jalonen wouldn't last a week in NA. And that style of play won't work NA, because ice is smaller and it is easier attack from the boards. In big ice you should just always let a opponent have a puck there and stay at middle. There is no threat, because boards are too far from net.
But his coaching style and methods did harm Finnish youth hockey. All coaches started to mimic his style what is very well suited on big ice WHEN you have worse players than other team. But it hurts young players when all they can do is just wait and play passive.
Very passive, slow, defend the middle of ice with all five players. It is very boring and Jalonen wouldn't last a week in NA. And that style of play won't work NA, because ice is smaller and it is easier attack from the boards. In big ice you should just always let a opponent have a puck there and stay at middle. There is no threat, because boards are too far from net.
If one negative has to be said about J.Jalonen with this 2024 tournament was that he has a tendency to ignore our AHL options or the lesser NHL players who are borderline AHL or NHL players, but it's understandable considering how much success he's had with his usual methods. This year his old methods didn't work anymore. He selected a much too inexperienced team. Finland won 8 out of 9 games of the practice games or something like that and he probably gave that a bit too much credit. He locked the team way too early and didn't wait for possiblle NHL options, like for example the Czechs did. Necas (& Pastrnak) for the Czechs and no Aho for Finland from the same team, Carolina. Never know about the injury situations but there were others available for Finland as well, such as Rantanen.
The trend was obviously downwards with the last two WHC tournaments being QF exits, but that's a career that no other Finnish coach will beat between the years 2025-2100. He deserves a statue built if you ask me.
It's hard for me to think that in the eyes of Finnish ice hockey fans J.Jalonen would tarnis his legacy as another team's head coach. He would have to coach against Finland at some point and that would be so ackward. I don't think that money drives his decision making anymore, so he won't do that.
Everyone can have their own views but for me when Kari Jalonen went to coach Czech Republic, it was at the same time fun to see how he'd do there, but on the other hand something in me kept thinking, traitor. Can't help it when the coach is high enough caliber coach. In those kind of situations for me it always goes that way. Now some lesser coaches, such as Ville Peltonen being the assistant coach of Latvia is really meaningless, because he's not the level of either of the Jalonens. Same with Toni Söderholm being formerly the head coach of Germany. I had no problem with those cases.
There was a case with the Finnish volleyball head coach called Tuomas Sammelvuo who left the Finnish NT team to coach Russia's NT volleyball team, chasing some bigger profits and fame and he did get success with them. Olympic silver, was it? I can't look the guy the same ever again. Luckily that sport sucks anyways.
Uncle Scrooge
Hockey Bettor
I mean, when the rosters are consistently worse than the other top teams, how else are you going to have success? Overall they've had little NHL help.Deployed a defensive mindset & playstyle. Very boring hockey, gets afrom me.
The year they won the WJC it was some of the most exciting hockey you'll see. Finns averaged a hair under 4 goals per game. That's when they had top-end talent relative to the competition.
