So yeah some pre-season thoughts so far:
- Before yesterday Lenni was playing on the 2nd line with Fabre and Tiivola, with Järvinen's former linemate Palola getting a good look on the 1st line. Neither looked good so Lenni went back with Järvinen and Erholtz yesterday*, and looked better imo. One would assume the military service did also have a part with Lenni's poor play (happens quite a bit with other guys), and it still might take a little time to get fully going.
*also playing with them today
- The 2nd pp unit that Lenni is on has felt like the one with less predictability with more options and potential(edit*). The league said it is aiming to cut down on the holding and interference with rule changes for the upcoming season, and at least so far there's been a whole lotta penalties in the pre-season. We'll see how the PP will work with some new people being more in charge with that.
*But things are changing around with that a bunch still it seems, so yeah...
- At this point with a grain of salt: Seemingly new head coach Jarno Pikkarainen (no relation to Ilkka/Kasper) has a bit less of a structured and more of an overall active/hustling playing system with strong forecheck compared to last season. More confident in saying that he really seems like a good leader and locker-room guy.
- About the team around Lenni: good winger depth (some injury risk with a few), somewhat thin at center (with some potential) after Järvinen, solid defense (with the offense of it being a bit of a question mark), and the top goalie in the league (with the team still looking to move last years back-up)
- Team predicted to be around the 10th spot in the reg. season. 11 of their first 18 games are at home.
- Number of teams have gone up from 15 to 16. Top-4 go straight into the playoffs, 5th-12th play a series against each other to make up the other 4.
Pre-season still. After today's practice game vs TPS there's still one on the 4th and 5th.
For Ässät the reg. season starts on the 14th of September.