From the desk of Risto Pakarinen

Kings of Sweden

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:52:38 +0200

STOCKHOLM � Apparently there were a handful Swedes who had full confidence in their team before Sunday�s final. One of them was Carl Gustav XVI. The real king of Sweden.

�I was pretty calm,� His Majesty told the players when the newly-crowned world champions paid a visit at the Royal Palace in central Stockholm just 12 hours after they had beat Switzerland 5-1 in the final.

As the team presented the royal family with an autographed sweater, the players probably already heard the Poodles play their official tournament song - �En f�r alla f�r en�, or �one for all for one� - in the background because meanwhile, thousands and thousands of people gathered in Kungstr�dg�rden, a recreational park that can be seen from the castle.

Kungstr�dg�rden, �King�s garden� has in recent years become the new place for such events. Back in 2006, when Sweden won both the Olympic gold and the World Championship, the Olympic team had their parade end at Medborgarplatsen, a square on the south side of town, and the World Champions in Kungstr�dg�rden.

The stage has been ready every year, but for seven long years, it�s stayed empty, sadly overlooking the two lines of Japanese cherry trees that surround the park. Except for that one night in January in 2012, when the under-20 team celebrated their World Junior Championship out in the cold.

But on Monday, the sun was out, the cherry trees had bloomed and were already mostly green, with a shadow of pink still remaining there. Above the stage there was a big sign that said, �WORLD CHAMPIONS�, in Swedish.

Not many experts had believed in the team before the tournament, and they did stumble in the early rounds. They lost to Switzerland, and they lost to Canada, and they squeaked by both the Czech Republic and Belarus, winning both games 2-1. In fact, Sweden scored only 17 goals in their seven preliminary round games, fewest of the four teams that advanced to the playoff stage.

But they did score four in their last preliminary round game, which was also the first with Daniel and Henrik Sedin on the team.

Sweden scored 14 goals - and one in the shootout in the game against Canada - in its four games with the Sedins. Henrik and Daniel were the architects for ten of them, including eight of the team�s ten goals in the three playoff games.

�We watched a game on TV back home [in Vancouver], and what we saw was a hard working team in which everybody worked for each other. That�s the kind of team we love to play for,� Daniel Sedin told Aftonbladet before the final.

There they were, wearing the yellow sweaters, lifting the cup, just to hear the crowd roar. So many of them finally getting their due, their day in the sun. There were the Sedins, while Olympic champions from 2006, still somewhat unappreciated in their home land, because they�ve had the big three - Sundin, Forsberg, Lidstr�m - in front of them.

There was Staffan Kronwall, the brother of Niklas, who was the team captain, and led his boys to a wild song and dance number on stage, and there was Joel Lundqvist, the hard-working brother of Henrik, and the only one of the 2013 team who had been on the Kungstr�dg�rden stage in 2006.

And there was P�r M�rts, the head coach of Team Sweden, who finally got the gold medal that has eluded him in his years behind the national team benches. And with it he got a car from Skoda, the long-time official main sponsor of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

Two years ago he took his team to the World Championship final - but lost to Finland - and before that, he led the U20 national team to two silver medals and one bronze.

This time, M�rts was a winner.

�There�s no better place to get that gold medal than at home,� he said.

�We�ve felt a great unity in the group since day one, when we got to together in April. The spark was ignited, and the fire has burned since then. We�ve always believed in each other,� he added.

M�rts also noted that adding the Sedins to the team didn�t disrupt anything, as �the boys have been brought up in the Swedish system�.

In the end, it was the Swedish system that came through, and came out on top. Good defence, excellent goaltending from Jhonas Enroth, a team that pulled together. And a couple of twins from �rnsk�ldsvik, the heartland of hockey.

The World Championship final gathered an estimated three-million people TV audience. So did the Eurovision Song Contest from Malm�, Sweden, on Saturday. While the two audiences aren�t mutually exclusive, it�s safe to say the entire country came together on Monday, when Robin Stjernberg walked onto the stage with the championship team, and performed Sweden�s entry to the ESC: �You.�

The crowd was dancing, and the players were hopping, as Stjernberg hit all the high notes:

�Isn�t it crazy, yeah, isn�t it crazy? It�s all because of you-uu, all because of you-uuuooh.�

The home-ice ghost was nowhere to be seen.

From IIHF.com

El Guano

Wed, 8 May 2013 11:41:37 +0200

Right now, if I lift my eyes off the screen and stop typing this, I�ll see one of the most beautiful views over Helsinki. I�m sitting at an outside caf� on a hill, overlooking the bay, with the National opera, the Finlandia Hall, the National museum, the House of Parliament, the museum of modern art, and my old gym to my right.

And one lonesome swan slowly swimming across the bay from north to south.

It�s taken it a good ten minutes, so you it�s taking it easy, because one lap around the bay is two kilometers.

The fact that it�s a swan is significant, because swan also happens to be the national bird of Finland. So seeing that national bird swim majestically across the bay puts a smile on my face, the same way almost riding my bike over a blonde Finnish teenage girl yesterday did.

One, because I only almost crashed into her.

Two, because it wasn�t really my fault, she just didn�t see me at all � because she was busy reading V�in� Linna�s �Unknown Soldier� - the great Finnish war novel - walking past the statue of Paavo Nurmi - a legendary runner - at the Olympic Stadium.

So you see how a swam swimming from the National Opera to the Finlandia Hall could be a loaded Finnish moment.

Except that I don�t much like birds. Son likes to chase pigeons at squares and while I may sometimes tell him to take it easy on the birds, I admit, I too like to see them fly away. I don�t find bids cute or attractive, except penguins, maybe. I think most birds are a little scary with their claws, and their beaks, and their crazy eyes. All birds have crazy eyes.

Mostly, though, it�s the dropping. The guano. Bird shit. I hate it, I hate the look of those white droppings on a sidewalk, and there are few things that I think are more disgusting than getting bird shit in your hair. It�s happened to me twice. The first time I was quick to look up, and I caught a glimpse of the seagull, and one day, I will catch him. He can fly but he can�t hide. I never forget a face.

The second time, it was a flock of birds, shitting down on me, Wife, Godfather and his wife, but I got hit the most.

And frankly, swans are no better than other birds. Sure, they swim �majestically�, and yes, the one I just saw looked beautiful from a distance of about 150 meters.

But I�ve seen swans from up close, too. Swans are everywhere in downtown Stockholm, swimming - majestically - under the bridges between the Royal palace, and the Grand Hotel. One time, when I was on my way to the gym during lunch, 15 years ago, a swan had apparently got lost, wound up on the street, and was now walking back and forth among the pedestrians - not majestically.

As I got a little closer to the bird, it � crapped right in front of me on the street.

There was nothing majestic about it.

Undercover agent

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:28:36 +0200

Had they not rebuilt the Joensuu rink the way they have, I�d be able to show you exactly where I was when I realized I wasn�t going to become a hockey star, down to an inch. It was the middle of the night, and my team had just got back from a road trip to the west coast of Finland. I had probably not played a lot so for me, it had mostly been a 12-hour bus ride across Finland, with Twisted Sister playing in my Walkman.

I got my hockey bag from the trunk of the bus, and as I lifted it on my shoulder and started to walk towards the arena entrance. And that�s where it finally dawned on me. I wasn�t going to be the next Gretzky, or even Matti Forss, my big idol in the Finnish league.

�Maybe it�s time for me to move on to the other side,� I muttered to myself.

I had quit hockey at least once before, so when I sleepwalked to school six hours later - because I made it a point never to miss class after a hockey trip - I had no big plans for my hockey future, or any other future. But I had had a moment of clarity, and during that moment, I had made two decisions. One, playing hockey was a hobby. Two, I wasn�t going to quit the game, I was just going to move on, �to the other side� of things.

It took me a couple of years to figure out what that other thing might be, but by my second year in the university, when it was time to pick my major, I had a half-baked plan. I was going to become a hockey agent. And so I majored in marketing, and minored in law, a combination I had decided was perfect for an agent. Back then, it was a new idea, because there weren't many real hockey agents in Finland.

When I had thought about that combination, I had forgot about one thing: That the most important product I�d have to market was myself. I realized that fairly quickly when I graduated from the business school three years later, and had no clients. I had no job, and no money. No clients, and no plans on how to get clients.

After graduation I had moved to my Grandma�s attic, and after two weeks, upgraded to an apartment upstairs of an old house in the countryside, with the downstairs being used as a kindergarten. I didn�t have a shower in the apartment, nor a real kitchen, and I had to do my dishes downstairs after the kids had been picked up. But I did do my dishes, and on weekends, I was allowed to use the sauna in the main building - a former piggery - in the same courtyard.

One day, a former teammate, a former linemate, and a former best friend - that�s all the same guy, and still a good friend - called me. It was early afternoon, so I had just barely got up and had played Civilization 2 only for a couple of hours, but when I heard his voice, I was wide awake. He had played a couple of seasons in the Finnish league, but now he felt that he was treading water. It was time to shake things up. He felt he didn�t get the respect he deserved � so he asked me to represent him.

�Sure. Sure thing,� I said.

I pushed the Olivetti keyboard a little farther away, and then got up.

�So, like, what do you want me to do,� I added and started to walk around the apartment, thinking. Thinking hard.

�Aren�t you supposed to tell me that?� said my friend, and I could feel the blood rush to my head. I was quiet for a second, and just looked out the window. The kids were playing in the playground. It was a nice spring day.

�Well, I was just wondering if you�ve had any talks with them,� I said, and then my friend told me that yes, and then he asked me to take over.

The GM of his team was one of the most famous GMs in Finland. He was the GM of the biggest club in the country, and he was also the manager of the coolest hotel in town. All in all, that made him the most intimidating GM to deal with.

Never in my dreams and half-baked plans had I come across the situation of actually negotiating with somebody. In my vision, I was talking to the players, and I was walking around carrying a light brown stylish briefcase, or sitting in the stands, deep in my thoughts.

The only thing that matched my vision was my phone. It was cordless. That alone made it cool in the early 1990s.

I had no idea of how much a good player should get paid. I didn�t know how I was going to get paid. For one of my previous hockey business gigs - writing copy for brochures of a hockey software and showing demos of it to coaches - I had got a set of golf clubs.

None of that mattered, though, because I had a client, and I had a job to do.

A couple of days later, I put on a shirt and a tie, and sat down at my desk next to the window overlooking an empty country road. I looked at my white mailbox that looked like a Moomin, the one that I had built and painted with my cousin, and I thought the world was a pretty fantastic place when I - a kid - could be pulling major strings from the upstairs of a piggery.

�If they only knew,� I said to myself.

And then I punched in the GM�s number.

The phone rang once. Twice. I coughed. Third ring. �Hi, this is Risto Pakarinen�," I muttered. Four.

The GM answered. I introduced myself.

�� And the reason I call you today is that I�m actually calling for J,� I said.

There was no reply.

�You know, your player,� I added, thinking that maybe he was preoccupied with something or hadn�t heard me.

The line was silent for a few seconds, and just as I was about to say something else, the GM spoke.

�So, what are you, some kind of a fucking agent?� he said, spitting out the last word in disgust.

Then he hung up on me.

�I guess not,� I said.

This man's best friend

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:47:33 +0200

I lay in the backseat of our car, seemingly sleeping, but secretly eavesdropping on my parents� conversation in front. Back then, kids could do that, and I usually sat in the back, on my knees on the hump that runs through the middle of the car, but my head between the two front seats � if I wasn�t reading comics, that is.

We were on our way home from my aunt�s place just outside Helsinki. We didn�t visit her often, and I didn�t really know her, which made me dread those trips a little, but that one time I almost didn�t want to go home, because in the back of her yard, behind a chicken netting fence, my aunt had a half a dozen German shepherd puppies.

Did I want a puppy? Of course I wanted a puppy, but I didn�t want to make a big deal out of it because I knew it wouldn�t help anyway. I listened to the conversation, and crossed my fingers, and just as we stopped at the traffic lights in front of the main Post Office, I heard Mom and Dad decide that, yes, it�d be a good idea to take a puppy.

They didn�t tell me about it just yet, but the next day Dad drove back to his sister�s place, and came back with a puppy. Of course, I would have to participate in the care of the dog, I was told, and I promised that I would. I�d take really good care of him. We�d be the best of friends, just like the Famous Five and Timmy. Or Lassie and the little girl.

I guess one of the rational motives Mom and Dad came up with when they held their pow-wow in the front seat that day was that he�d be good company for me, who was just starting school, but Dad has always been an animal lover so it wasn�t that hard to convince him that it�d be a good idea to have a dog in the house.

We already had a guinea pig, and before that, for maybe a couple weeks, maybe just a few days, I don�t remember, we had a bird that Dad had found hurt somewhere, and saved. It was either a crow or a magpie, and I remember it sitting in a shoebox in the back of our car, behind me, on our way to Grandma�s house. Maybe that was the trip when we let him free again.

The guinea pig�s name was Roosa, the bird�s Roope.

The puppy was named Riku.

What can I say, we always liked names that started with R.

When Dad came back, he told the story of how he had picked that particular dog out of the many, (almost) equally cute puppies.

�When I walked up to them, they all ran towards me and barked and jumped up to the fence � except this one dog, who stayed a little behind the others, and looked shy,� he told Mom and me.

�So I picked him.�

And he couldn�t have picked better.

Because he was a German shepherd, and a strong one at that, Dad wanted Riku to be trained properly so that Mom, and me - because at this point we still entertained the idea of my walking him - could control him. Riku was enrolled into a dog academy. Dad visited him a couple of times so that Riku would learn that he was his master, and by the end of the training, Dad was there all the time to make the transition smooth.

We were very proud of him. Riku, that is.

Dad then showed Mom and me how Riku should always walk on our left side, with his head next to our knee. He�d sit, lie down, and stay in place until given permission to move, on command. But he also learned to give his paw, to hold a piece of chocolate on his snout, and throw it in his mouth when we told him he could do that. And of course, he could play dead, one of Dad�s favorite tricks. I think he also could count. He couldn�t do algebra, but he did count to ten.

I fully expected Riku to talk to me when we were at home in the afternoons after school, and when he didn�t, I made up his lines in our conversations.

�Hey, Riku, I�m home.�

�About time. Wanna do something,� he�d reply, wagging his tail against the hall cabinets, so that it sounded like a big drum.

�Sure. Whaddaya wanna do? Want to play Tarzan?�

�Only if I get to be the lion.�

And he did get to be the lion � except when he was Cheetah, or an elephant, or a crocodile I�d have to wrestle with. Or maybe he was the Dog in my version of Enid Blyton�s �Five Find-Outers and Dog� called �One Find-Outer and Dog�. Unless we played soccer, and he was the goalie.

All adventures always took place inside our apartment, because, while Riku was the smartest dog in the world, who graduated summa cum laude from the training academy and who also got trained by the police - when Dad�s policeman friend joined the canine unit - there was always the chance that something would happen, and I couldn�t hold back. After all, Dad used to let Riku pull him on the snowy sidewalks of Helsinki in the winter.

Of course there were days when I found him lying in front of the balcony door, his nose pressed against the little crack between the threshold and the door, where cool air would get in, and when I got home, he�d just raise his head a little bit, as if to you say, �Oh, you� and then go back to his resting position.

We all got what we wanted. Dad got a pet, Mom got company for the nights when Dad and I were at the hockey rink, and I - as planned - got a buddy. Mom likes to tell a story about my getting a pair of new skates for Christmas, and being so, so happy that I didn�t know what to do. So what did I do? I hugged Riku and whispered the good news into his ear.

Then I grew up, and I didn�t play Tarzan (as much) with Riku, but he�d still be there for me after school, although, the days when he just lifted his head a little bit became more of the norm. But we played ball, and we talked and had each others� backs.

By the time I was a senior in high school, Riku had grown old. At 84 (in dog years), he was a greybeard, and it wasn�t just as easy to get him excited about fetching those tennis balls anymore.

At the end of high school, seniors in Finland dress up in costumes, and then get thrown out of school in February so they can study for the national exams in March. Riku had been with me from first grade, so I thought it�d be great if he�d be there with me when I finish high school. My plan was to dress up as The Phantom, and Riku would be my �Devil�. (For all you phantomaniacs out there, I know, �Devil is not a dog, he�s a wolf�).

That winter, though, one weekend, he got very tired. He just lay on the floor, and didn�t want to get up. He whimpered a little, but mostly he just seemed to want to sleep. That wouldn�t do, so I tried to cheer him up. I teased him with a ball, and petted him, and talked to him, and he got up. Then I got him outside, and I started to throw snowballs for him to fetch. Of course, they disappeared into the snow, baffling Riku completely.

And I stood there, and threw snowballs to him, underhand, just a little behind him, so he�d have to try to twist his body in the air if he wanted to catch it. And fifteen minutes later, he was back to his usual self, the happy-go-lucky dog that he was.

I was happy to see that because I believed that it was me that had brought back his will to live. I thought that if only I could love him just a little bit more, he�d want to hang around a lot longer.

Riku died a few weeks later, when I was on a hockey trip on the west coast of Finland. Dad had found him, and wrapped him up, and carried him to the car. And then he found him a spot at a pet cemetary, and a tombstone, and for years we�d go to his grave on our way to my grandparents� graves at Xmas.

A few weeks after Riku died, it was time for my last day of school. I wore red swimming trunks on top of my hockey one-piece underwear, Mom�s hood, Mom�s hat, Dad�s winter boots, and a plastic belt that Dad made and painted the Phantom�s skull on. On top of everything, I wore Dad�s long winter coat.

I looked at myself in the mirror, checked that the skull logo on my belt was visible, and that my face was covered by my mother�s hat. I was happy with my costume. I looked just like the Phantom. It was perfect.

If not for the empty space to my left.

Ten points to Hufflepuff

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:24:12 +0200

Tonight, I went to the gym wearing my brand new Paris Saint-Germain football team�s hat. Well, its not technically just mine, but Daughter�s and mine. We bought that one, and a Gryffindor hat from the Warner Brothers studios� Harry Potter Tour in London last week, and the deal is that we�re co-owners of those hats. We both can wear those hats.

As I walked up the stairs to the gym, I saw a dude say something to me. I didn't hear him, because I was listening to a hockey podcast, but when I saw that he said something to me again, I took the earphones out of my ears and said - as politely as I could - �What?"

�Yeah, the game starts soon," he said.

"What?"

"The game. It starts. Soon."

I had no idea what he was talking about and it must have showed, because the dude pointed to my hat and said, "PSG".

The Paris team is popular in Sweden now because the nation�s biggest football star, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, plays there. The guys at the reception desk at the gym also seems to like it, because a couple of days earlier, as I was leaving the gym, he yelled �Paris� to me, and gave me the thumbs up.

"Oh, oh, yeah, PSG, right," I said to the dude, still not really knowing what he was talking about, but at least I knew he was being nice, and talking about football, and my hat. (And Zlatan).

I smiled and walked by him, and then turned around, because I felt I owed him an explanation.

"I completely forgot that I was wearing a PSG hat. You know, I have a Gryffindor hat, too, and for a second I thought you were talking about Quidditch."

He looked at me, and smiled politely.

The most gullible man in the world

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 21:41:33 +0200

Aah, it�s springtime in Paris. It�s a little chilly, yes, but the sun has just come out, we�ve just wandered through and around the Louvre, and have seen the Mona Lisa, and we're just enjoying being right here, right now, with the Seine in front of us, and farther down the river, the Eiffel tower looming large over the city.

Wife is a couple of steps in front of me, Son and Daughter just behind me, when suddenly an old lady crouches in front of us and picks something from the ground. I don�t see her at first - because I�m taking photos - but when I almost bump into her, I take notice.

�Is this yours?� she asks, and shows me a gold ring.

�Nope, not mine,� I say. Daughter�s right next to me, admiring the shiny ring in the old lady�s hand.

�Keep walking,� says Wife, but I don�t. I�m looking at the ring, and I feel sorry for the person who�s dropped such a nice ring. The ring is big and it�s heavy.

I know this, because the old lady has now dropped the ring on the palm of my hand.

�Just give it back to her,� Wife says, now another three steps farther away from Daughter and me.

�You think it�s gold?� the old lady asks me, and points to some markings inside the ring. �Is that a gold marking?�

I squint, and try to see if there is a gold marking, but as I go through the motions, I remind myself that I don�t really remember what a gold marking looks like.

�Tough to say, but it sure is heavy,� I tell her.

She puts it in my hand, and tells me to give it to Daughter.

�Give it back to her,� says Wife. Now I�m torn, but I walk away from the old lady, and put the ring on a stone wall by the street.

Daugher and I walk a little faster to catch Wife, when we hear the old lady shouting behind us. We stop, and wait for her.

�Just take the ring, just take it,� she says, and I can see her brown eyes, and her teeth with a matching color.

�Then maybe give me something � for coffee,� she adds.

And until that sentence I hadn�t realized it was a scam. I tell her I don�t have any money, she doesn�t believe me, and when I tell her that �honestly, I don�t�, she turns away, taking the ring with her.

I�m a little surprised that I didn�t see the play. After all, I do call it �the oldest trick in the book� when I tell Wife what the old lady had said to me. Also, my legs have barely stopped shaking after two young men tried to rob my camera just four hours prior, before we entered the Louvre.

Aah, it�s springtime in Paris. Son and Daughter are climbing on a bench, on one of the many bridges over Seine, Son wearing a red beret he bought - with his own money - about an hour earlier. They�re happy so I�m happy. We�re in Paris, and the sun is shining.

The kids are facing the river, and I make them laugh when I tell them I�m going to take photos of their butts. That, of course, makes them turn, and then turn away again, and I stand there, cracking more jokes and snapping more photos.

Suddenly, I see a young man to my right. He�s saying something to me in French, and he�s holding a clipboard with a white piece of paper on it. At the same time, another young man walks up to me from my left, and he, too, speaks French and waves a clipboard in front of me.

Everything happens very quickly, but as I try to find a way out of the situation, I see that the man to my right has his hand around the strap on my camera. His hand is around it, but he hasn�t grabbed hold of it, not yet, and I leap backwards, and yell, in �French�: �Nooooon, no-no-no-non!�

Both guys look at me, raise their arms in that French way, with their palms up, and look at me like I was the one who just insulted them, and then they walk briskly down the street. I check my pockets for my wallet and phone, and when I find both still there, I look up and see a young lady jump two meters after the two young men surround her. She escapes the attack, and the men keep on walking.

With the ring episode behind us, I decide it�s a good idea to tell the kids of all the other times I�ve been fooled during my travels. Just so they know this is just something that happens in the world.

So I tell them how Dad and I were in London, and wanted to buy a watch or bracelet from a guy outside Harrods. Just as I had given him the ten-pound or twenty-pound bill, somebody yelled �Police!�, and he packed up his stuff and ran in one direction, Dad and I the other. I still don�t know why we ran.

I tell the kids how ten years ago, as I walked through Stockholm, two guys asked me if I wanted new speakers, straight off their van. Apparently, their company was moving, and they needed to get rid of them. I looked at the speakers, but decided that they were too big.

I tell the kids how in Rome, when Wife and I were walking alongside the river Tiber, a car pulled up next to us and asked for directions to the Vatican. Having been in the city for just three hours, I was more than happy (and proud) to be able to point the man to the right direction.

�In fact, if you look that way, across the river, you can see the St. Peter's Basilica, right there,� I told him.

�Thank you, signor,� he said.

�Thank you so much,� he added, �thank you. You�ve been so nice that I�d like to pay it back to you somehow. Let me give you a leather jacket.�

He waved towards the backseat of his car, where there was a pile of leather jackets. He reached back and gave me one. It was a nice jacket, and had he given it to me for free, I sure would have taken it. Of course, he wasn�t going to do that.

�I�m sure it�ll look good on you,� he said.

�Oh, signor, I�m almost embarrassed to say this, but � my tank is almost empty, and I don�t have any money. I�m running on fumes here. Now, you get the jacket, and you give me whatever you can give me,� he said.

�I don�t have any money,� I said.

�Honestly,� I added then.

He looked at me, and asked for the leather jacket back. I gave it to him, and he extended his arm, in a handshake.

�Thank you,� he said. �Let me just thank you.�

By now, the situation was a little strange, but I did walk up to the car, and took the man�s hand. And we shook hands. A little longer than I had expected. Or wanted. He just wouldn�t let go of my hand, and for a second, I was absolutely sure he was reaching for a gun.

He wasn�t. He smiled, let go of my hand, and drove away.

Then I tell the kids how on that same Rome trip Wife told a tourist playing the shell game with the cups and the pea that he shouldn�t wage any money on that because he had seen the guy remove the pea. The guy with the cups didn�t like that very much, and we had to run from the market.

And just as I finish telling these stories, we turn a corner. Just then, a young lady walking towards us, seems to pick something up from the ground. She looks at us, shows us a big, shiny, golden ring, and asks:

�Is this yours?�

�Non,� I say, and we cross the street.

�That must be the oldest trick in the book,� Son says.

Daughter listens to my stories intently, her mouth and eyes wide open. She�s quiet for a while. She�s thinking.

�Dad? Why do the tricksters always choose you when they try to fool somebody?� she asks me.

�That�s a good question,� I said. �I don�t know.�

She looks puzzled.

�It�s because Dad looks like a nice guy, and he�s always helping others, of course,� Wife says.

Daughter nodded.

�I know," she says.

Woulda coulda shoulda

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:38:00 +0200

Another March day. The sun is shining, after some light snowfall. The snow in spring is so light it looks fake.

�It�s like the snow in the movies,� said Wife when she took off with Son and Daughter this morning.

I waved to them from the front door, until I saw Son�s red hat disappear behind the garage. I closed the door, packed my bag and went to the gym because while you can make a change any given day, sometimes you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again to really make a change.

Although, I�m still doing the exact same weight program I used in 1995, and see no change.

Anyway, I walked in, and got my lucky locker - number 2 - got changed and walked back into the main gym area. I was sitting on a bench, adjusting my hair, admiring myself in the mirror when a beefy man walked up to me and asked me if I was going to work out or just read the book I had in my hand. I said I had just finished, like I always do, and left the seat.

As I got up, I glanced at the mirror again, and realized that I wasn�t wearing any pants. I had walked naked into the gym, with just my Dallas Stars hat on.

Well, no, I didn�t. But I could have.

I only did a shorter workout today, and skipped stretching like I always do, because I was in a hurry to turn a great idea I had got walking on the treadmill into reality. I ran downstairs to the grocery store - my gym is at a mall - and asked to get the biggest cardboard box they had.

They said they didn�t have one, and I said that of course they had, and the guy at the customer service thought about it a second and said, �you�re right.�

�One of thems has to be the biggest one,� he said, turned around and gave me a blue and white box with �Chiquita� on the side.

�Perfect,� I said and ran up the escalator to the second floor. I tore a flap off a cardboard box, wrote �Stories bought and traded, 5 kronor� on it and put it up against the box, then sat behind it on the floor to wait for customers.

And I sat there for hours, listening to people�s fantastical tales.

Well, no I didn�t. But I could have.

Instead, I walked home, and listened to music. I sang along as I always do, and I tap danced all the way to the tunnel when I saw two kids standing in the middle of it, facing each other. I saw clouds of smoke around them, but I wasn�t sure if it was from cigarettes or just air - in which case, strictly speaking, it wasn�t really smoke - but I decided to keep an eye on them as I got closer.

The taller kid had his back towards me, the smaller one looked like he was ten or so. And he had something in his mouth. I stopped tap dancing.

�Yo, man, kids, homesies,� I said, and they turned around. Well, the taller one turned around, the shorter kid just stared at me.

�High-five, low-five, beetches,� I said, and the boys smiled.

�Yo,� they said in unison.

�Whatchadudes doin�?�

�A little graffiti,� said the taller kid.

�Hey, guys, can I help you?� I said.

The kids looked at each other. The taller boy whispered something to the smaller kid - who, by the way had a lollipop, not a cigarette in his mouth - and his face lit up.

�Are you really Paksy? The Banksy of Sollentuna?� the smaller kid asked me.

�Yes, son. Yes, I am,� I said, and then painted my tag on the wall.

Well. I didn�t. But I could have. That didn't happen. But it could have.

Instead, I came home and worked for a few hours.

Except that I didn't. But I could have.

I should have.

Top of the morning

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:38:14 +0200

For about six years, I�ve had a theory about what makes certain people sleepyheads, and what makes others get up early - way too early - in the morning. For my research, I have used human guinea pigs.

Exhibit A, �Son�, gets up at the crack of dawn and refuses to go back to sleep, fearing that he will miss something while asleep. What that might be is a topic for another study for which I don�t have funding yet.

Exhibit B, �Daughter�, refuses to get up at all, kicking and screaming everybody and everything within, well, a kicking distance from her bed. Once up, though, all sunshine.

�Son� was born in the middle of the night, 2.58 am, and �Daughter� in the evening, at 6.30 pm.

And my hypothesis goes like this: that�s how you know if you're a morning person or not. Son got out and about in the wee hours for the first time, and has always been a morning person. Daughter waited until the evening, and she�s always more of an evening person (because yes, she certainly doesn�t like to go to bed).

The funny thing about Daughter is that as soon as she�s awake, she�s the happiest, funniest, loveliest person in the world, and it�s not just me saying that. Wife thinks so, too. It�s just that it takes a concerted effort to get to that happy place.

That�s why, if we have to leave early in the morning, she gets to sleep in her clothes.

Sometimes our household turns into a vaudeville show in the morning. A vaudeville show with an audience of one, and she doesn�t even have her eyes open. But there I am, with Krtek, a hand puppet of the Czech mole, in one hand, and Krtek�s buddy, the little mouse in the other.

�Hey, mouse, wanna see something funny?� I�ll say and when the mouse says �yes�, as he most often does, I launch into a pretty elaborated song and dance number.

Now, that was years ago, and doesn�t work that well anymore. Daughter�s seen all the Krtek shows and isn�t looking forward to new ones. Fortunately, just as Krtek�s magic vanished, Wife�s little monologue as �the Lion� worked and got Daughter up in no time. In just 15 to 20 minutes.

We�ve joked, we�ve screamed, and we�ve carried her to the downstairs sofa for an extra five-minute nap. We�ve sang and we�ve danced, we�ve played her favorite tunes, and sure, every once in a while I�ve teased her, trying to get her to snap out a dream.

We look forward to December because in December she likes to get up to watch the advent calendar on TV, almost on her own.

We�ve played tricks, we�ve had treasure hunts, and we�ve done gymnastics to get her to wake up, and not be cranky. But cranky she is.

It�s a fascinating transformation because by the time she then gets to the breakfast table, thirty minutes after the rest of the family, her hair pointing every which way, and her pajamas hanging on her, she�s all smiles and hugs, and full of life.

This morning, the three of us, Son, Wife and I, tiptoed into her room, Wife carrying a tray with a sandwich and a cup of tea, Son holding onto a small box, and me with a camera in my hand. And we sang. We sang "Happy birthday" to Daughter who turns seven today, and who�s been counting down the days since early February.

She got up in a second, with a big smile on her face, and listened to us finish the song. Then she gave us big hugs, and her big hair was pointing every which way, and she blew out the candle that was also on the tray.

After she had opened her presents - Son insisted on buying her jewelry on his own - she looked at Wife.

�You know, I was already awake when you guys walked in," she said.

That's how special a day today was. Tomorrow? Krtek, get ready. It's showtime.

Culinary time travel

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:05:41 +0200

Erik Haag and Lotta Lundgren went time traveling and spent time in the 18th and 19th century, in the 1940s, and the 1970s. They didn�t use a DeLorean. They used food.

Maybe this is the last year we all walk around carrying takeaway coffee cups, sipping our lattes, and using coffee shops as our offices away from our home offices. It doesn�t seem likely, but surely there must come a time when our nutritional habits have changed so much that even an idea of somebody eating on the run seems odd, let alone that they would carry hot, addictive liquids with them.

�Food is culture,� says Lotta Lundgren, a Swedish food writer, and one of the two stars of �Historie�tarna�, a TV show about Swedish food - and culture - in different eras.

And since food is culture, it�s apt to change.

Back in the 1970s, people smoked in movie theaters, on airplanes, and in their offices. Not anymore.

Just like the 18th century Swedes probably never imagined food that would be cooked and served warm, there will be something that changes the way we eat, the way we live, and, then, like Bruce Springsteen sings in �Rosalita�: �We'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.�

Erik Haag is a Swedish writer, comedian and a TV personality who�s been a regular guest in Sweden�s living rooms since the 1990s. Lotta Lundgren took the country by storm some five years ago when the then-advertising copywriter started a food blog called �If I were your housewife.� The blog turned into a book and a career in TV. Lundgren is now working on another book about cooking, and food.

In 2012, Lundgren and her partner in crime, Erik Haag, spent a week in six different eras. They dressed they way people dressed then, they acted the way people did, and most importantly, they ate and drank the way people did. The six episodes were - on a timeline:

17th century, Sweden as a superpower
18th century, Freedom (freedom from absolute monarchy)
19th century, Oscarian time, after King Oscar II
1920s, the roaring 20s
1940s, the war years
1970s, the radical years

�The reason we chose these six eras was that we wanted them to be different from each other so that it would be good television. Every era has its story, but we wanted to contrast from going from the 19th century to the 1970s,� says Haag.

�It turned into a symphony,� he adds.

The production company had a meal historian on their research team, and he briefed the duo on the characteristics of the different eras. He showed them how and when different drinks and food had been consumed, and how quickly they also disappeared.

�Food says everything about that particular time, and we could potentially do something about every passing year,� says Haag.

For six weeks, Haag and Lundgren were human guinea pigs, trying to reach back and live the life of their ancestors, or other selves in another era, in an attempt to remind people of what Sweden was all about, and how Sweden has come to be what it is today.

�Everything creative has to have a starting point, something that you can hang other things onto. And with every endeavour you have to decide which stories to tell, and which not to tell. For us, in this show, food was the centerpiece. We began the story with food, and the rest came naturally,� says Haag.

While the show was light in its delivery, thanks to the chemistry between Haag and Lundgren and guest appearances from Swedish comedians, the backbone is in science, and documented facts. Haag and Lundgren wore period clothes, all episodes touched on religion, architecture, and the social norm issues as well, and they had experts who could tell them about the period�s politics, and customs, as dinner guests.

�There are a lot of recipe collections and cook books available, the first ones aimed at the masses date back to 18th century. Back then the upper class had servants to prepare their meal and women were dominant figures in Swedish households and that�s why the recipes are still with us,� says Lundgren.

Recipes for the show were found, for example, in Susanna Egerin�s cookbook from 1733 and Gustafva Bj�rklund�s cookbook from 1847.

�I�ve wanted to do travel back in time since I was a boy and this experience comes as close as can be. So when we ate the soup made of a leather belt, it felt like a luxurious thing to do. I was privileged to get to do that. Somebody had researched everything, and then prepared the food. I remember the cook saying, tearing up, that some of those dishes hadn�t been cooked for 400 years, and will quite possibly never be cooked again,� Haag says.

Food is culture, and food is communication. What we eat and how we eat are who we are. Food is a part of our social code, which is probably why the 1960s science fiction vision of the future man consuming food in the form of pills hasn�t happened.

�Saying that food is fuel is like saying that sex is simply a matter of fertilization,� says Lundgren.

�I think the idea of food as fuel is an idea that was born in our time. I think about what I eat, and watch my carbohydrate intake, but I think there�s also a placebo effect. If I got something that has little carbohydrates, but was told it was loaded with carbs, I�d probably still think I could run longer,� says Haag.

For Lundgren, everything comes around to food. To her, food, and they way people eat, is a way to explain the world.

�Humans can�t eat certain things because we literally don�t have the stomach for it, but if you can digest it, you can eat it. There is no right or wrong, everything simply mirrors our time,� she says.

�Back in the 17th century, people were supposed to eat according to certain body fluids, and make sure they got food that warmed them and cooled them down and so on. There are people who say you should eat according to your blood group, which is silly, considering blood group is determined by just one gene out 20000-30000.

�But we all want to eat better than others. Food is culture, and food is close to religion, so we want to know that our religion is better than yours,� she says.

Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, even all the way up to the middle part of the 20th century, people ate so that they could work. Well, for one part of Sweden, food was important as a way to entertain their dignified guests, but for the masses, food was a matter of survival.

That became obvious for the history eaters as well.

�I think I asked at some point when the food would be served warm, and the answer was '19th century',� says Lundgren.

While there had been some sort of refrigeration machines in the 19th century - the first patent was given to Jacob Perkins in 1809 - it wasn�t until the 20th century that household models started to appear into the market.

�Food was always kept in room temperature, which meant cold rooms, and it wasn�t until the 19th century that the idea of warm food really became prevalent. That surprised me,� says Lundgren.

�I thought first that it was simply that food wasn�t an interesting part of people�s lives, that nutrition was the primary goal, and it was. Culinary experiences were a little too high on their hierarchy of needs. But not for the rich. They have always eaten well, with good spices and everything,� she adds.

Being suddenly thrown from the GI-indexed world into the 18th century is a shock to the system. But not as bad as one might (want) to think.

�We did get ill during the filming of the 19th century program, but I don�t know if it was the food or the fact that it�s mentally tough to work 14-hour shooting days,� says Lundgren.

While Haag and Lundgren didn�t undergo any medical studies during the filming of the series, Lundgren did keep an eye on her weight - as she says she always does.

�I gained weight during some weeks, and lost weight during others, but I wasn�t able to make link it to anything we ate,� she says.

�I think you can handle more than you think, and changing your diet just like that isn�t that bad. It�s not the body that is affected, it�s the mind. Getting out of your comfort zone happens fast when you don�t get to eat what you want,� adds Haag.

And not just that. There�s always the fact that the crew members do get to eat exactly what they want to.

�Well, it was tough to see the crew drink coffee when we were shooting the 17th century show, and there was no coffee available for us then,� Haag says, smiling.

The duo didn�t just eat the way people did in the different eras. They lived the life, and had small assignments to carry out. In the 1920s they were farmers, in the 1970s, Haag was a smoking journalist. They wore the corsets, the wigs, and the cotton long underwear with pride.

�I think they were extra tough on us during the 19th century show and I wasn�t allowed to eat without Erik. One day I basically didn�t get any food because he was running errands elsewhere,� says Lundgren.

�That was tough. I felt violated. So I supposed that was an authentic 19th century feeling, for a woman,� she adds and laughs.

Another part of was the drinking. Back in the 17th century, water wasn�t the drink of choice because there was no fresh water so people drank other beverages, like beer.

�It felt a little strange to start the day with a beer,� says Haag.

�We drank four, five liters of beer, and hard liquor and some nice wines. Warm beer worked just as well as coffee once you get used it,� adds Lundgren.

Every era had its surprises, and every era had its ups and downs.

�The 1970s were just a fun show to make because we could goof around, and be silly. And our parents recognized themselves in the characters.

�In the 19th century, we got porridge that was really bad. I don�t understand how people had the energy to work if that was what they ate. The 17th century was so exotic, it was so different from today that it might as well have been the Star Wars,� says Haag.

One pleasant surprise was finding the roots of Swedish food culture.

�The 18th century food comes back at certain intervals: At Christmas, midsummer. The drinks, the schnapps tables, those are ours. The rancid butter, the aged cheeses, the gravlax, all the dishes we�ve all eaten at every major holiday in Sweden comes from that era. That�s what midsummer and Christmas are supposed to taste,� says Lundgren.

�I�ve always raved about the Italian food tradition, so it was really great to go to the 18th century, and be served the alcohol and the starters, and realize that that�s our tradition. It felt really authentic � and it�s ours,� adds Haag.

Spreading that word was important to Haag and Lundgren.

�I work with food and with people who work with food, and even they didn�t know that that�s where the roots of our culinary history are. We may think husmanskost, our home-cooked meals - like meatballs and pyttipanna - are that, but that is actually a very modern invention,� says Lundgren.

�So it was nice to give people an intensive course on that,� she adds.

�It was a cultural good deed,� adds Haag, and practically finished Lundgren�s sentence, as they often do.

After their previous series, �Landet Bruns�s�, �The brown sauce country�, they got angry messages from people who thought they were looking down on Swedish food.

�People didn�t want to acknowledge the fact that Sweden had been so poor. But, that�s a fact, and we can�t rewrite history,� says Lundgren.

Now that they�ve been to the 17th century, and back, they�d like to go back in time again.

�It�d be fun to go back as far as possible. The challenge is that we can only go back to documented time, where we know things have been a certain way for sure. Even the viking era would be difficult to recreate, and we�d have to guess a lot, but I think we could do that,� says Haag.

�There�s a company that has a sample of all the cultivated plants in Sweden and they can say whether the vikings ate this or that,� adds Lundgren.

Haag says there has been talk about a new series, and about a faster-paced one at that. However, he thinks the fact that they were the guinea pigs for a week - �it felt almost like a nature program� - helped them pass on the feeling of being in another time better.

�These days we could choose to eat anything, but we only eat a small part of what is available. Suddenly we got the opportunity to try something new, and in a way, leave our own personalities behind. It was like a vacation from myself,� says Lundgren.

�I recommend doing that,� adds Haag.

�Absolutely,� concludes Lundgren.

Original article published in TreeFree Food #3.

Small Things of Joy

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:59:17 +0200

According to a Finnish proverb, �if sauna, tar and booze don�t cure the disease, it�ll kill you�. I�ve never had to try all three to feel better, so I�ve always simply assumed it to be true, which is why I keep spreading the words of wisdom to Wife, and Son and Daughter.

Fortunately, those three aren�t at the top of the list of cures in our household. Fortunately, because we haven�t been sick very often, and because I�m not sure how to use tar as medicine.

Anyway, at the first signs of a cold I turn to another holy trinity.

When I was ten, going on eleven and home from school, I was home alone. Well, with our dog and our TV. Our dog was great company, TV not as much since there was nothing on during daytime, and while we did have a video recorder, there were no movies on video yet. So I read, and chatted with the dog.

Some time during the day, Dad would come in to check up on me, and to make sure everything was fine. And with him, he�d always have orange soda, bananas, and a new comic book, most often a Donald Duck one.

That was enough to make me feel better, but just to be on the safe side, Dad sometimes also brought some chocolate. He�d get in, see that I was fine, and then go back to work.

One time, when I was ten, going on eleven, the soda and the comic book and the bananas got me up on my feet in no time, and I was lucky because the cross-country skiing world championships were on TV. I sat on the couch with a pad and a pencil, and two stopwatches on the coffee table, ready for me to take notes of the skiers split times as soon as the race got under way.

Juha Mieto was Finland's big hope and my favorite as well, simply because he didn�t wear gloves when he skied. I sat there cheering for Mieto, when I suddenly got a little hungry. We lived across the street from a grocery store so I decided to get something to eat. I immediately also decided what I�d get.

Lihapiirakka, the Finnish meat pie, a two-pack. I found some loose change in Dad�s jacket pockets and ran down to the store. That was our deal. If I needed something, I could check his pockets for change. For some reason, he always had some loose change in his jacket pockets. I still don�t know anybody else who keeps change in his pockets.

I held the coins in my pocket, and with the key on a string around my neck, skipped down the stairs. It didn�t feel right to watch cross-country skiing and then be out and about like that, when I was supposed to be sick, but I figured it�d only take me three minutes to run to the store, get the pies and run back.

I ran into the store, and picked up a two-pack from the fridge, and then ran to the checkout line. And there, in front of me was the mother of a classmate of mine.

�Busted,� I said to myself.

She placed her items on the belt, and as she put the basket down, she saw me.

�Hello,� she said.

�Hello,� I said. �I live in the house over there and I just ran down to get some pies but I�m really sick so I should be at home and I will be in a second, but I just needed to get something to eat, because I have already eaten the food that my parents left me, and�.�

�I see,� she said, and smiled. Then she paid for her groceries, and went home.

I ran home with my pies, and cursed myself for being so stupid, and so greedy and weak, because now my hunger for meat pies had got me into trouble. Now the word was out. Surely everybody would now think that I had skipped school to watch Juha Mieto.

I went to school the next day, but nobody said anything.

Now I�m a Dad with a son that�s ten, going on eleven, and who just happened to be sick today. Since I work from home, having a sick child at home doesn�t change things that much. Especially with a ten-year-old who can entertain himself with Minecraft and books and movies.

Things have changed.

However, there are some things I try to keep the same, so around noon, I left Son home alone to go the gym. I was going to be out for about an hour, and I knew Son was going to be fine, but I was happy not to run into anybody I know all the same.

On my way home, I thought of Son, and how he was big enough to be just fine home alone, like I had been. I decided to get him the magic medicine: the soda, bananas, and a comic book.

I knew we had raspberry soda in the fridge, and that Son would enjoy the pancakes I had promised to make him but I did need a comic book. I ran over the street, and hopped over the ditch, and ran into the gas station that was the closest store.

I picked up a Donald Duck from the stand, paid for it, and walked back towards the main street when I took a look at the cover. The name of the pocket book was �Small Things of Joy.�

And I thought it was perfect for the occasion.

So did Son.

The one that got away

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:42:08 +0100

On the top shelf in our basement, there�s a brown cardboard box with dozens of baseball hats in it. I don�t know the exact number, but if I say forty, I won�t be off by more than five, either way. And those are hats that aren�t in active rotation, because those forty or so, are in a metal basket next to our front door.

On my way out, I grab the one that matches my mood, if not always my clothes.

Nobody needs close to hundred baseball hats, of course. I didn�t want a hundred hats originally. All I wanted was one.

The one I really wanted was blue, and it had a mesh back, and a logo of a hockey team on the front. It was a logo I had never seen, but then again, I had only seen a few NHL logos, and the St. Louis Blues weren�t the hottest or the most iconic of teams around.

But that was the hat a schoolmate of mine had. He had bought it on his hockey team�s trip to the US, something I hadn�t even dreamed of. Sure, I knew other teams had traveled to tournaments, too, and even my team had been in Sweden for hockey, but the coolest thing we found was a popsicle with two sticks. (Which was very cool).

The hat haunted my mind. I wanted a baseball hat, too, and when I noticed a tiny classified ad in the paper, I persuaded my mother to order �a real baseball cap� for me. Unfortunately, while it was surely � a real baseball cap,� it was also completely white, with no logos in the front, and even worse, no mesh in the back. It was just a hat.

About a year after that disaster, a friend of Dad�s happened to play in an exhibition game against the New York Rangers and I guess the Rangers gave hats to the opposing team players because one ended up in our household, and on my head.

I�ve collected hats ever since. I�ve walked miles and miles in rain in Rouen, France to find a store that sold hats with hockey logos. I�ve got lost in Vancouver trying to find the Canucks store. I have hats with NHL logos, I have hats with my name on them, hats with Swedish teams� logos, and a hat with the Women�s Olympic Qualification tournament logo on them.

But as with many other things, I�m often reminded of the one that got away.

In the mid-1990s, one of my teammates was a guy who had moved from Finland to Sweden as a boy, then back to Finland to do his military service, and then fallen in love and stayed there. He was a proud Finn, and an even prouder Gothenburgian.

Every year, he’d take his family to Gothenburg to visit his parents, and to eat the world�s best pizza. One time, he came back from Sweden with a hat. For me. It was a red hat, with the word �FR�LUNDA� in green letters in the front. It was a Fr�lunda Indians hat, all the way from Gothenburg, and it became my favorite hat.

Those days, my gym was at a big sports center, the venue for boxing, gymnastics, and weight lifting in the 1952 Olympics. There are still basketball courts, and dozens of young gymnasts practice there so the weights and the workout machines are scattered around the arena. My workout always ended in the second floor, where the leg curl machine was, and where I�d do sit-ups and stretch. Well, not as much stretch as lean against the railing and watch kids play basketball.

One evening, as I was leaving home, I couldn�t find my favorite hat anywhere, and after some serious thinking, I deducted that I must have left it hanging in a hook in the dressing room at the gym. While I wanted to stay carefully optimistic about the hat�s fate, I also quickly deducted that I might have lost it forever, and the next time I was at the gym, the man in the lost and found quickly confirmed my suspicions.

�What? A Swedish hockey hat? Nope, haven�t seen it,� he said, without even looking at me.

�That�s what I was afraid of, but � thanks, anyway,� I said and went to change into my gym gear.

About 45 minutes later, I was up in the second floor, doing sit-ups and stretching, when I saw a kid on the basketball court wearing a hat that looked very familiar to me. I waited until he got closer so I could see better. He sank a three-pointer, and when he picked up the ball, I saw �FR�LUNDA� in green letters on his hat.

I stopped stretching and immediately walked to the stairs, skipped down, and took a left and a right and confronted the young boy who was two heads taller than me.

�Hey, nice hat,� I said.

�Uh-huh,� he said.

�Where�d ya get it?�

�My cousin.�

�Oh yeah? From where?�

�Um, Sweden.�

�Where in Sweden?�

�Gothenburg, dude.�

I really thought he�d give it back to me once he realized that I was the hat�s obvious, real owner. Now the boy had passed my first three questions and had almost survived my inquisition. I had to nail him with my next one.

�I like it. Nice � nice colors. What does it say there � Frr��?,� I let the rest just hang in the air.

�Fr�lunda,� said the guy and bounced the basketball a couple of times. I could tell he was in a hurry to get away, but I had all the time in the world. All the time in the world. I smiled.

�Fr�lunda? What is that anyway?�

�It�s a hockey team,� he said and turned away.

�Oh��

�I knew that,� I muttered.

As I walked to the dressing room, I watched him jog slowly to the other end of the court and make a layup, then adjust the Fr�lunda hat on his head.

On the top shelf in our basement, there�s a brown cardboard box with dozens of baseball hats in it, but no Fr�lunda hat.

He believes he can fly

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:38:52 +0100

Like many, or most, small boys, I, too, had ideas about the future, and what the world would look like when I grew up. Well, I had one idea. I thought it would be neat - that is the technical term for it - if the roads and streets of Finland were covered by a similar electric ceiling like the bumper cars at Linnanm�ki, the amusement park in Helsinki.

I also thought it would be neat if all the streets in Helsinki would freeze over so I could just skate to school every day.

Yesterday, I went for a skate on a lake close to our house. I�ve been there before, of course, because it�s something of a must-see around here. Wife, who�s originally from the other side of the lake, took me there for the first time our first winter.

That time, I wore my hockey skates, and I may have even worn my hockey gloves, even though you can�t really play hockey on that pond. But, I was a hockey player so I brought my stick and gloves.

I know I had my stick, because on the home stretch of the shorter track, the three-kilometer one, after we had sat in the snow and drunk hot chocolate and eaten our sandwiches, Wife had some problems with her skates, while I was still going strong, or at least trying to look like it. So, I towed her back in. I held on to one end of the hockey stick, Wife the other, and I picked up speed. And then I picked up some more speed. And then some more - �I�ve never seen anyone skate that fast,� said Wife - and then � my skate got stuck in a hole in the ice, and I fell, and I pulled Wife down with me.

But we survived, and we�ve been back to the lake many times every winter.

That first time, I remember thinking that it was just like my dream of skating on the streets. There are two wide tracks on the lake making it look like a street. I remember the wind on my face, and how fast I seemed to go - and did, ask Wife - and how that must have been the way we were actually supposed to travel here in the North.

I had been looking at the other skaters jealously as they took one stride while I took four, but I simply took it as a challenge. Besides, I only skated around the shorter track anyway, and I could do three kilometers in my hockey skates any day of the week. But just as I always talk about running the New York City marathon, I kept talking about skating on lakes, and apparently somebody heard me because last Christmas, in 2011, that is, I got a set of long blades, and a thermos, from my brother-in-law.

And last weekend, while rummaging through some boxes in the basement, I noticed a pair of winter boots on the shelf, and decided to see if they would fit in the bindings on my blades. And they did. Off I went.

My first few strides are a little cautious. My winter boots, while continentally stylish - since I bought them in Vienna four years ago - don�t have the same ankle support as my hockey skates, which is actually the way I like it, it just took some getting used to.

I put my gloves on, adjust the backpack and take the first real strides, and by the time I reach the �start� sign, I�ve already adjusted my goal from skating around the short track to going for the full 14-kilometer lap. Double digits.

The track is empty so I have all the space in the world. I pick up speed and by the time I turn around at the nook of the lake, up towards the end, I'm flying. I listen to the sound of my blade cutting the ice, and the rhythm of my skating was in harmony with the rhythm of the talk in my earphones.

I feel the wind on my back, and I smile a little, until I realize I would have to skate against the wind on the home stretch. But I decide to worry about that when I get there. I step over and around a few big cracks on the ice, and then return to my steady rhythm as quickly as possible.

Left, right, left, right, crackle, right, the signs says two kilometers, left, right, left, right, left, right, then suddenly another sign marking three kilometers.

I feel like I�m actually traveling. I know that to get back home, I�m going to have to turn around, but I push that thought out of my mind again, and imagine going from one place to another because I have to get from here to there.

Everything around me is different shades of white, mixed with some light shades of blue, and in some places, although these spots are few and far between, the ice is black and I can see down to the depths of the lake, reminding me of the fact that I am indeed skating on a lake, not a Zamboni-flooded artificial ice that�s painted white.

This is real.

Then I feel the smell of yeast, and without the signs or Google Maps, I know exactly where I am. I�m at the yeast factory, and I think of Wife and her stories of her old classmate who declared in classroom that in a case of war Sollentuna would be a target for bombs, because of the yeast factory.

Just as I get to the turning point, I see a black dot in the horizon, and I assume it�s another skater. Even though I tell myself to just keep skating, and sticking to my rhythm, I accelerate and soon I�m a little out of breath, but I�m also just a few strides behind a man.

I pass him and I keep pushing a good while longer so that I get a nice distance between him and me, so that he wouldn�t think I passed him just to stick it to him. I glance behind me and see him a few hundred meters behind me so I stop skating and just raise my fist for a second or so.

12 kilometers says the sign, and the wind, my friend just a half an hour ago is now my enemy, blowing against me. I remember being ten years ago and walking to school in a snow storm, with the wind on my face, and how I then imagined being Prince Valiant, and I laugh at myself, and then I imagine being a messenger with an important letter in my backpack and I accelerate so I can deliver it on time.

The shorter track joins the longer track from the left and the two tracks merge into one, and right there the ice is soft. My blade gets caught in the slush and I ran a few steps across, and then keep skating. I can already see the red huts on the shore, and I now I decide to cut a few seconds from my time.

And I skate as fast as I can, and I zig zag a little to go around the many cracks, and when I get to about thirty meters from the Start sign, I let up, and glide towards the benches, blow my nose, and when I get to the bench, sit down.

I take off my blades, walk to our car, throw my blades in the trunk, and drive home.

It�s not a bumper car, and I�d rather skate home, but it's as close to my dream as it can get.

Frozen

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:52:54 +0100

It�s never cold in the beginning. My fingers still work, so I can take photos with my mobile, and do a Facebook check-in. The cold doesn�t hit until the last ten minutes of the hour, and by then, I�m so close to going home I know I�ll make it out of there alive.

I look down to my feet, and I see that I�ve managed to stomp a perfect square into the snow, and that makes me happy. I�d smile, but the muscles on my face won�t move anymore. I look out to the ice to see if Daughter is still skating around in circles. She is. I look at the clock at the other end of the field, and note that I still have seven minutes to go.

My fingers are cold now so I�m keeping my hands in fists inside my gloves. My toes are also cold, and I can�t wait to get to the car, when the blood starts to circulate in my toes again, and I get that tingling sensation in them.

I remember walking past the Royal Castle in a snow storm with Wife ten years ago, with my teeth chattering. She told me to relax instead

�If you�re freezing, you shouldn�t fight it, you should just relax,� she said.

I answered her with the sound of chattering teeth.

�It�s true, my sister told me that,� she insisted, and with both of them sisters now against me, I exhaled and relaxed.

And I exhale now, at the edge of this bandy field, and my shoulders drop. I see Daughter coming back towards me, following her coaches, and giving me a quick look. She does that to see if I�m watching, so I lift my left arm and give her a thumbs-up with the empty thumb of my glove.

She waves, and accelerates to catch up with the coach.

It doesn�t seem that long ago I was inside a hockey rink, wearing a hockey sock in my head, circling around an empty rink, shooting the puck to an empty net, then picking it up, shooting it against the boards, and skating to the other end to do the same.

We were supposed to have a hockey practice that day, but with the mercury dropping on the thermometer below our official minus-15 degrees Celsius limit, most of the other guys had either gone home, or had never showed up in the first place.

I had stayed for three reasons. One, I really liked to play and since I already was there, I figured I might as well go out and shoot some pucks. Second, it was the cool thing to do, and acted as a testament to my true love of the game � or at least that was the story the next day at school.

And third, I had to stay in case my fans showed up. They were there for most of our games, and practices, and sometimes after school, I�d see them sitting outside their apartment building close to my school, and I�d stop, and we�d talk, and I�d make them laugh, and then ride home feeling pretty good about myself.

It was so cold that after just a few minutes, my face was so frozen I couldn�t really talk anymore, because I couldn�t move my mouth. And then I saw the group of three young girls walk towards the rink, and the three of them stand there side by side, watching us goof around. I saw one of them make a small wave-like gesture to me, so I nodded slightly, then picked up the puck, and took a shot. I missed the net, and the puck hit the chicken wire behind the net, and disappeared inside a white cloud of puff as the puck hit the frost off the wire.

I skated towards the girls.

�No practice today. Optional, actually. Too cold,� I said.

�It sure is cold,� said the tallest one.

�Yup,� I said, turned around, and went back to shooting the puck.

They stayed there for twenty minutes, and then walked back to the rink cafeteria. I played some more and then went to the dressing room and peeled the skin off my ears.

I guess I should have known they�d make me stay at the hospital when they gave me a bath, but I was only five years old, so I didn�t know much about things like that, and the truth became obvious to me soon enough anyway.

The water flowed from the faucet, and the nurse was trying to make me sit.

�It�s too hot,� I said.

She turned the tape a little to make the water colder.

�Now,� she said.

I put my hand under the flowing water.

�Still too hot,� I said. �It�s hot.�

The nurse kept on turning off the hot water, and I kept on telling her the water was still too warm. It was too warm, I wanted it colder.

The nurse looked at my father with a puzzled look on her face. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders.

�I don't know what to say," he said. "He does like the cold.�

Awkward non-silence

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:32:14 +0100

When I was a kid, and home alone after school, I sometimes stood in front of the mirror in the hall holding another mirror, and gaze into the mirror tunnel I saw in front of me. I used to stand there and think it was an entrance to another world.

Decades later, when I was a single man living the single man�s life, it sometimes happened that on a Sunday afternoon, while watching a rerun of �Friends�, I realized that I hadn�t spoken with another person since Friday night when I had left the office.

Now, that didn�t mean that I hadn�t spoken at all, or opened my mouth one bit. I�d most likely been singing along classic 1980s hits, or laughing out loud - back then nobody LOLed - and speaking to the talking heads on TV, even arguing with them.

But also, I had been speaking just to myself. I used to hold speeches, in English and in French, mostly in English, on topics that ranged from post-game statements to the media to Oscar speeches to something I should have said to a client or a friend.

�Mais, mais, je.. Je��

Yes, my French speeches were short.

I don�t talk in the car like I used to, and I recently discovered that I seem to talk to myself only in one specific instance these days: When I think back to something I�ve done, and conclude that it might have been embarrassing.

The other day, for example, I was in the kitchen making coffee and I thought back to an interview I made the week before during which I told the interview person that I happen to make the best lattes in Stockholm.

And as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I laughed a little, and started to mumble, and shake my head a little, and kept talking to this imaginary person, going through the process of making a real good cafe latte.

Most of the times, though, I just say something like �Oh, well� or �Now, wasn�t that something�, or, �But it�s true!� Sometimes I crack a joke, and then other times I may sing a little.

I actually sing a lot in the house. I�m not a great singer, which is why I only sing in the house, but in here, I like to sing. Anything can trigger a song in me. Son says he needs a name for his cartoon character, tentatively called �Square� so I suggest calling him �Hip� as .. in

I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around
But I couldn't take the punishment, and had to settle down
Now I'm playing it real straight, and yes I cut my hair
You might think I'm crazy, but I don't even care
Because I can tell what's going on

It's hip to be a square

Mostly I do Finnish oldies, though, and we even play this as a game. Son and Daugher can throw words at me, and I�ll sing a song about that word. (If anyone knows a song in which �fork� is featured, let me know).

Last week, Son and Daughter and I were on the bus on our way home from school. Son was playing something on my iPad, Daughter had my �iPad mini mini�, my phone, that is, so all I had was the bus window and my thoughts.

And that�s when I thought about a comment I had made to another interview person - I never learn, do I - and it made me feel a little awkward, and this time my escape was a song. I belted out a Finnish classic about a silver moon, a song often sung in our house.

Of course, we were on the bus which made it an awkward moment and when I think about it now, I want to stand up and hold a speech. And that loop reminds me of that mirror tunnel.

I can�t believe I told you about the mirror tunnel.

How embarrassing.

IT�S HIP TO BE SQUARE!

Fasth goes mental

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:54:54 +0100

Anaheim Ducks goalie Viktor Fasth had a lot of physical work to do to overcome a knee injury while playing in Sweden.

He also had some mental changes to make.

Fasth told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter he once threw his goalie stick 17 rows into the crowd. When his former AIK goalie coach Stefan Persson tells the story, he stops at row 7 -- but you get the picture.

"When I was in my teens and got my first real goalie mask, our equipment manager told me once that the next time you break a stick on the crossbar, I'll take your mask and throw it to the ground," Fasth told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. "Somehow I remember that one."

He's better now, he said -- and it shows.

Working with mental coach Martin Blom, Fasth improved his approach. Persson points out another detail that makes Fasth a successful goalie.

Persson made a video of Fasth, showing just the moments when he turned his head and looked around during one game. The edit was four minutes long. He edited a similar video for AIK's new goalie, Daniel Larsson, at the beginning of this season. That edit was 22 seconds long.

"No other goalie moves his head as much as Fasth," Persson said. "Your eyes are key to everything. If you know where you are and where the other players are, you can then steer the defense and talk to the defensemen, and you don't have to guess when you make saves."

Every once in a while, Fasth has to return to the basics. That's when he works on angles, positioning, and getting up from the ice.

"He had some problems with the small [NHL] rink, but it was just a matter of adjusting things a little," Persson said.

How little? Four inches.

Though he could claim some, Persson won't take credit for Fasth's breakthrough in the NHL.

"Who came up with the flop in high jump, or the V-style in ski jumping? It wasn't a coach, it was an athlete," Persson said. "Viktor's so modest, and when you hear him praise the defense after a game, that's truly him. He also knows that when he has a bad day, he'll get their support."

But the goalie coach is surprised.

"Did I think he'd get to the NHL when he came to AIK? No."

Originally published here.

Fasth's road to the NHL

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:50:44 +0100

When goalie Viktor Fasth signed a two-year contract with Stockholm AIK in 2010, it was barely news in Sweden. The biggest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, had a three-line blurb about it, and Aftonbladet, the biggest daily, pulled the general manager's comments off AIK's website.

No wonder. AIK played in the second- and third-tier leagues for years and had just then, in 2010, earned promotion to the Swedish Elite League. Fasth, too, spent his career in the second- and third-tier leagues, and had just signed his first SEL contract at 27.

"He was a good goalie when he came to Stockholm, but he had only played about 40 games in the previous two seasons due to his knee injury, so I suppose other teams didn't want to take a chance with him," AIK goalie coach Stefan Persson told NHL.com. "We had another goalie who had also struggled with injuries, but our GM, Anders Gozzi, just said that we can't be so unlucky that both goalies get injured at the same time."

Now, a slight injury to Anaheim Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller has given Fasth his chance in the NHL -- and he has taken full advantage. The 30-year-old rookie has won all six of his starts and is one of the surprise stories so far this season.

The path he has taken is a long one.

The knee injury Fasth suffered while playing soccer to warm up before a practice kept him sidelined for nine months in 2008-09, but it had also gave him the opportunity to build himself up. Together with his club's mental coach, Martin Blom, Fasth worked on his psychological and physical strength.

"The season was over [already in October], and everything was dark. So I called Martin and his first words were: 'Perfect! Now we can work on everything we've talked about,'" Fasth told Aftonbladet early in his first season with AIK.

So when Fasth returned to action with the Vaxjo Lakers in the second-tier Allsvenskan in the fall of 2009, he had made thousands of saves in his mind and had worked on getting stronger.

"There was no pressure, they had all the time in the world, so Martin had Viktor work with light weights and made sure the foundation was there," Persson said.

Fasth had been an accomplished goalie in his teens -- he played for his district team and got into the hockey high school in Lulea, about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle -- but he also had been rejected by the Lulea club and had to play Swedish Division 2 instead. (That sounds better than it is, Division 2 is the fourth-highest division in the country.)

Fasth then moved back to Vanersborg, in the south of Sweden, 10 miles from Trollhattan, a city formerly famous for a Saab auto factory now referred to as "Trollywood" thanks to several hit movies coming out of its film production facility. He played Division 1 hockey there with the Tvastad Cobras, a merger between a Trollhattan club and a Vanersborg club.

Though that team finished last and went belly up, the top team in Division 1, Tingsryd, wanted Fasth. And after three seasons there, Vaxjo, came calling. Fasth took another step up, to the second-tier league in Sweden.

When he arrived in Stockholm in 2010, he knew what he wanted to do.

"He said he wanted to get tighter, play a little closer to the net," Persson said. "A lot of goalies can say that without knowing what it means, but Viktor knew exactly what he needed to do.

"When I saw his attention to details, I realized he'd go far. He's also a very modest person. He says he's never the best, but he just keeps working hard to see how good he can get. Maybe this is as good as he gets, maybe he can be even better."

Persson carries with him a laptop with more than 30GB of videos and clips of his goalies with training programs and playbooks for them. He pulls up a video that shows Fasth working post to post, and Europe's "Rock the Night" comes out of the speakers:

"I've gone through changes; I've gone through pain"

Persson's laptop wallpaper is of Fasth hitting the ice in an Anaheim Ducks sweater. The coach can go back and watch Fasth's every save from the past two years, or see his workout regime and practices.

Naturally, Persson is keeping an eye on his former prot�g�'s play in the NHL.

"He was fantastic in the game against [the Colorado Avalanche], but he disappeared in the game against the [St. Louis Blues]. I had to send him a message, although I'm just happy to see him do well," Persson said.

"I'm surprised to see how well he handles the stick now. Maybe they've worked on that."

Persson and Fasth stopped worrying about save percentages and instead focused on wins and goals-against average because, as Persson said, "They don't lie."

"It's fun to see that his plan works even in the NHL," Persson said. "I think their goalie coach Pete Peeters had asked to play a little more aggressively in the NHL, and he had tried it in the camp, but it's also important for a goalie to stick to his style, because if he changes it too much, and it doesn't work, he may never get another chance.

"But he's so tough mentally. And because he has such high demands for himself, he also has high demands for others."

After his first season with AIK, which ended in a World Championship final with Sweden and a loss to Finland, Fasth caught the attention of some NHL teams. But he didn't want to sign because he was offered only a two-way contract and he had just become a father.

"He called me about an hour before the deadline and said it was time to recharge the batteries, because he was coming back to AIK," Persson said.

Last season, Fasth played more games, won more games and had a better save percentage than the season before. He had proved he was no flash in the pan, got a one-way contract from the Ducks, and left Stockholm.

"He's 30 now, and he's fought his way to the NHL just because he decided to work as hard as he could, and see how far that would get him," Persson said.

Originally published here.

Kek�l�inen

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:22:26 +0100

Seemed like a good day to dust off this profile on Jarmo Kek�l�inen, the Columbus Blue Jackets new GM, who at the time of the story was the St. Louis Blues' assistant GM.

Click below for the story. Here's a pdf version.

Eagle Eye Jarmo
Common sense counts when NHL executive Jarmo Kek�l�inen builds championship teams. His secret is the skill to control his own passion for hockey.

Jarmo Kek�l�inen, a National Hockey League (NHL) executive, loves hockey. He gets a rush out of winning and building championship teams. But to get there, he has to put his emotions aside and believe his eyes and the data. For a scout, seeing is believing.

�The St. Louis Blues select from Warroad High School forward T.J. Oshie.� That sentence by Kek�l�inen, the St. Louis Blues Assistant General Manager and Head of Amateur Scouting, made a lot of hard work worth while for a lot of people.

First, there�s naturally T.J. Oshie, the teenage hockey player from an American high school. Being drafted into the NHL is a dream for all young hockey players. Oshie was just one of the players that had their big day at the NHL entry draft in Ottawa last year. All the practices, games and missed social events suddenly cashed in: Oshie hit the big time.

In a way, if only for a day. The real payoff will come the day Oshie finally makes it to the NHL. That may be in a year or two.

It may also be never.

Either way, Oshie is not the only one wishing for his breakthrough. Kek�l�inen will also be rooting for him. If Oshie turns out to be the kind of player that Kek�l�inen and his scouting organization are betting on, getting the rights to sign him to a lucrative contract is worth every cent they invested in finding him, and other hockey prot�g�s.

Kek�l�inen is in charge of the Blues� amateur scouting organization, which combs through the best young players in the world.

Scouting keeps him on the road. His home, or home base, or both, however you want to put it, is just outside Detroit, Michigan. He says it�s a convenient location for him, as it�s close to an international airport, the big universities in the East, and the Ontario Hockey League north of the border.

On the week of the Profile interview, Kek�l�inen landed in Stockholm on Tuesday and saw games in the Stockholm region the same day. The next day, he was in Gavle, Sweden, some 160 kilometers away. On Thursday, he flew to Prague to see some games, then jetted to Gothenburg on Saturday, saw a couple of games there, and returned to Stockholm on Sunday night.

�During the season, I can never say that I need to take a weekend off,� says Kek�l�inen.
�I�m lucky to get a Monday with no junior games scheduled. Even if there isn�t a game, there are still the player evaluation reports to read and write, statistics to read and, different ranking lists to go through,� he says.

With a travel schedule like that, it doesn�t matter that Kek�l�inen�s house isn�t even in the same state as his employer�s office. And yet, he is the assistant general manager of the club, and involved in every major hockey decision made by the club�such as player trades and signings of new players. But it�s the entry draft that is really his show.

�We have our 13 scouts in strategic spots around the world. They evaluate the players in their own regions before I show up,� he says. �Once a player is rated better than a certain threshold grade, I want to see him play.�

That threshold would be around the second round of the draft.

�I want to see the best players a few times,� he says. �The local scout is my best source of information. If I see somebody play a great game, the scout can tell me additional information about the player. Maybe it was his best game ever against a mediocre opponent. Maybe the player had a fever. And knowing that, I can make a decision. I have to have complete trust in the guys on the ground,� he says.

In the NHL, the draft is the great equalizer. In simple terms, the teams that finish last in the standings get to choose first. Seven rounds of 30 teams choosing players translate into over 200 draft choices.

The way the NHL organizations generally work the draft is using �The List.� After all the player evaluations and interviews, Kek�l�inen and his team draw up a list of players they would want to draft.

�Of all the drafted players, only a fraction end up in the NHL and only about one player per team per draft manages to make a prominent NHL career. I expect our organization to find first- and second-rounders that play in the NHL,� he says.

Working through The List in the draft is a game in itself. Practically no NHL teams drafts for currents needs�the players are too young to carry a heavy load in the league�and instead teams, according to Vancouver Canucks� General Manager Dave Nonis, �draft assets.�

Some �assets� are capitalized by the organization that drafted them, others are traded away for new �assets.�

�Working The List is basically easy. You just list the players in the order of your preference and then strike out the names that have already been drafted before it�s your turn. And then you take the player who�s on top of your list,� says Kek�l�inen. He has also been in charge of the draft for the Ottawa Senators when he was their director of player personnel.
At the same time, you have to have a feel for the other clubs and what they might choose. Sometimes it�s worth the gamble to trade your draft pick for a lower one, get something in return, usually an extra pick, because you still get the player you want.

�In Ottawa, we traded our late third-round pick for an early fourth-round pick and got an eighth-round pick in addition. We still got the goalkeeper, Ray Emery, we wanted all along,� says Kek�l�inen.

T.J. Oshie was number ten on Kek�l�inen�s list last year.

�Our Minnesota scout didn�t believe Oshie would be available when it was our turn. Well, he was,� he says.

Jarmo Kek�l�inen is a lone European hockey executive in the NHL, and is generally expected to become the first European general manager of an NHL club. He was the general manager of HIFK, Helsinki in 1998 when the club won the Finnish Elite League championship.

He has been a hockey star most of his life. He climbed through the ranks in Kuopio and debuted on the local team as a 17-yearold. He was also a member of several Finnish junior national teams. He played hockey at Clarkson University in the United States and signed an NHL contract with the Boston Bruins in 1989 as a free agent. He was a member of Team Finland in the 1991 Canada Cup.

He retired at the age of 29 due to injuries.

There are only 30 teams in the NHL, which means that there are only 30 jobs Kek�l�inen is ultimately interested in. And to make it to the top one day, he has to be both bold and consistent�and he has to do a good job wherever he is. In 2002, Kek�l�inen left the Ottawa Senators after not being promoted to the GM position that became vacant. Today, the Senators are on top of the league, while Kek�l�inen�s Blues are in the rebuilding phase.

�It�s a little sad to see the Senators do so well and not be a part of it, but at the same time, it�s good to see the team that I have helped build to do well,� he says.

�It�s the championships that count, and winning that makes all the work worthwhile,� he says, and then adds, �There�s nothing better than to see it all come together in a championship team. I felt that with HIFK in 1998.�

To become the first European general manager in the NHL is something that drives Kek�l�inen. It�s not the only thing, and he doesn�t think about it every day, but it�s something he wants. Basically, if he becomes the first European GM, that day can�t be far away.

�Well, a general manager would probably be able to spend more time at home,� he says, laughing. �Seriously, at that point, I would get the power to really build a team. Yes, it would be a high-pressure job, but I always try to turn the pressure into something more positive.�

�I don�t think my being European is an obstacle. I mean, I know my hockey, I have an American university degree and I speak English just as well as the North American GMs. I sincerely believe that if I keep on doing a good job, my day will come,� he says.

�Selection of a GM should be about ability, not nationality.�

Hockey skills are the most visible attribute in a player, but Kek�l�inen is even more interested in the intangibles.

�Playing hockey is much more than having fast legs and hands. It�s about instincts, work ethic, winning mentality, heart, and desire,� he says.

Just as the game itself is all about being in the right place at the right time, the same applies for building a career outside of it. Both for Kek�l�inen and the players he scouts.

�Find the right players in the right roles. That�s it. If the player evaluations and expectations are correct, the team works. Player evaluation is important because that�s the information the decision making is based on. If the expectations are askew, the result is a disaster. Often a player that looks good gets pigeonholed� and keeps on getting new opportunities but in the wrong role,� he says.

One example is Eero Somervuori, former prodigy who was touted as the new Teemu Sel�nne when he was 16-years-old and playing for the Jokerit team in Helsinki.

�The club�s marketing created expectations that were simply off. Eero was, and is, a good player, but he wasn�t like Teemu. Eero had to find a new team with more accurate expectations and a role that fit him to get his career on track,� says Kek�l�inen.

And that, Kek�l�inen says, applies to all teams anywhere in the world. Because to create a real team feeling, not only do the players need to know what is expected of them, they also need to know what the other players� roles and expectations are, and to respect them.

�First, the biggest mistake a manager can do is to only draft or like players that remind him of his own style. You have to be emotionally detached from your own game. But at the same time, my easiest, and one of the best scoutings was somebody I played with,� he says.

�Tappara, Tampere needed a player, and their GM Kalevi Numminen showed me a list of players they were considering. I looked through it and pointed at a name. I told them that he was a great face-off man, he had great hockey sense, and even though his skating looked a little odd, he could deliver the puck to the right place at the right time. I knew it because he delivered the puck to me game after game in college,� says Kek�l�inen.

�I want to be surrounded by people who can make a case for their evaluation. Somebody sitting on a fence is of no use to me, or to the organization,� he says.

T.J. Oshie is no longer a high school student. He�s enrolled in the University of North Dakota and has continued to develop as a hockey player. When North Dakota won the Western Collegiate Hockey Association championship in March, Oshie was elected to the tournament all-star team.

* * *
Kek�l�inen on...
... what makes a coach great: Credibility and charisma, respect from players, ability to read and react.
... how to survive on the road: Work out regularly and get enough sleep.
... balancing work and home life: Relax in the summer time after the draft.

Published in Profile, May 2006

The Slovak Code

Sat, 9 Feb 2013 12:16:37 +0100

Greetings from Poprad, Slovakia. Ďakujem. That�s all I can say in Slovak, and while I know it�s not much, according to my mother it�s the most important word in the world. It means �thank you�.

I�m here to cover the women�s Olympic qualification hockey tournament, and - as far as I can tell - I am the only reporter who�s not either from Slovakia or Japan.

It�s got its advantages and disadvantages. The upside is that sometimes I get a little preferential treatment. I get to handpick the players I want to talk to, and they bring them to me, before they meet the rest of the media.

Then again, when it�s a press conference setting, and they have people interpreting the questions from Slovak to Japanese and from Japanese to Slovak, and then the answers, they don�t want that one guy asking anything in English.

Instead, they give me a private recap of some of the answers, and I�m sure it�s not as detailed as the actuals answers seem to be, but who am I to disagree with the coach if he thinks �it was a good game�.

So last night, I listening to the Japanese and the Slovak questions and answers for about fifteen minutes, but I didn�t hear ďakujem, or any of the Japanese words I learned from the TV mini series �Shogun� 30 years ago - like �wakarimasu� - so I mostly just stood there and smiled.

Ten years ago, I was at the hockey world championships in Ostrava in the Czech Republic with a group of friends. While there, we realized that the language barrier between us and the locals was a big one. One of my friends had worked in Poland for years, and he drew upon that experience to come up with a solution.

�We should just speak Finnish. I mean, we don�t speak Czech, they don�t speak English, it doesn�t really matter what the common language we don�t understand is,� he said.

�That�s what I always did in Poland. The important thing is to just smile, look happy and friendly, and use numbers,� he added.

And that�s what we did. We ordered food in Finnish, and got drinks in Finnish, and bought train tickets in Finnish, using a lot of numbers, all the while smiling. And people smiled back.

Smiling�s important, especially when you don�t know the language. While there�s the language barrier, and we seem lost, we still have the social code.

Poprad�s covered in snow. It has been snowing three of the four days I’ve been here which means that the sidewalks are gone. In their place is simply a tiny path that goes through the snow. On my first day here, I went for a walk to find the city center. Finding downtown is important to me because I don�t think I�ve truly visited a place if I haven�t been downtown. (Wife and I drove around Oklahoma quite a while to find it).

On my way there, I met a young lady walking to the opposite direction. The path was obviously too narrow for both of us, but a few meters before we would have passed each other, she saw a hole in the snow by the side of the path, and then very carefully placed her foot in the hole, so I could pass.

I nodded to her, smiled and kept on walking.

On my way back to the hotel, just outside the arena, I saw a man carrying two plastic bags, one green, one red, walking towards me. We, too, were on a collision course. As we got closer, I saw a footstep in the snow, by the side of the path, so I very carefully placed my shoe in the hole, and let the man pass.

Ďakujem, I muttered, smiling.

He slowed down a little and looked at me. Then he nodded approvingly, smiled back, and kept on walking.

The year of the flying glove

Tue, 5 Feb 2013 23:49:24 +0100

Finland in November is a dark place as it is, but in 1991, it was darker than ever. The housing bubble had burst, several banks went bankrupt, and the unemployment rate shot from 3.5 percent in 1990 to 12 percent by the end of 1992.

And there he was, a 22-year-old, baby-faced part-time kindergarten teacher who had scored an incredible 36 goals in 35 games in the Finnish second-tier league, to follow up on his 43 goals in 33 games in major junior the year before. His club, Jokerit, had been on the brink of bankruptcy for years and was demoted to the second-tier league. In his four years with the team, Jokerit not only got promoted back to the elite league, they won the Finnish championship in 1992.

He clinched the championship when he took a long pass at the red line, accelerated, left the defenseman behind, and beat the goalie with a backhand. Then he circled back up toward center ice, threw his glove in the air, and shot it down using his stick as a rifle.

His name was Teemu Selanne.

Back in 1977, when Team Finland captain Veli-Pekka Ketola returned to Finland from Winnipeg, he looked back at his time in the WHA in an early memoir. He told a story about tens of thousands of people lining up on the streets of Winnipeg to see the Avco Cup parade.

"I can't even imagine that any Finnish athlete would ride down the [Helsinki main street] Mannerheimintie in a convertible. Finns are just different; we don't cheer people that way. Not even [four-time Olympic winner] Lasse Viren," he said.

"If my team drove down the streets of Pori after a championship, there'd be just five people there -- and they'd be throwing eggs," he added.

And yet, when Jokerit won the Finnish championship, they did have a parade, and thousands of people did gather at the Helsinki Senate Square to celebrate with their heroes.

Suddenly, everything was different. Everything.

Selanne left Finland as the league's leading goal scorer, with 39 in 44 games. In fact, in his 97 games in the last three seasons in the SM-liiga, Selanne had scored 76 goals. After a season in the second-tier league, another gone awry due to a season-ending leg injury, and two seasons in the top Finnish league, Selanne, 22, was ready for the NHL.

And he took Finland with him.

As he left Finland, Jokerit announced that his number had been taken out of rotation. While it hadn't been officially retired, it was reserved for Teemu's use only. The club was obviously holding on to some hope of getting their star player back at one point.

"We can never replace Teemu as a person, but we'll have to try to replace him as a player, and we need to get at least two new players," said Jokerit owner Harry Harkimo.

Teemu was on a first-name basis with Finland. There's never any need to use his last name, everybody knows who Teemu is.

Selanne's image in Finland was a mix of superhero and the kid next door. By day, he was a part-time kindergarten teacher, and by night, a goal scoring machine. He was a poster boy for milk -- literally -- and he had already played for Finland in the 1991 World Championship on home soil, in the 1991 Canada Cup, and the 1992 Olympics.

In hindsight, it's almost impossible to think that fans in Finland hardly ever saw Selanne play once he left the country. There were no NHL cable packages so the first order of business for hockey fans in Finland was to check page 235 on the Finnish Broadcasting Company's teletext service, a habit that is still hard for many to break.

The first Finnish morning TV show had started just three years earlier, and once Teemu got going, highlights of his goals were shown on the show.

And there were goals.

He started the season with 11 goals in 12 games, and had 40 by the end of January. Mike Bossy's record for goals in a season by a rookie stood at 53, and Selanne had 13 to go, with 32 games remaining.

That season, one Finnish network even aired an NHL game live from Los Angeles. Of course, the Kings played the Jets that night. Sure, there was someone named Wayne Gretzky on the Kings, and yes, they would go all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, but in Finland, it was about someone else. It was Jari Kurri vs. Teemu Selanne. It was about that torch. Even if the Jets didn't win much, bowing out in the first round or not making the playoffs, it didn't matter as long as there was Teemu.

With all the goals, and Bossy's record in Teemu's crosshairs, the Selanne watch became intense in Finland. (Valio, a Finnish dairy company, aired their new milk commercials with Selanne ordering a glass of milk in a Canadian sports bar). The Jets took the status of Finland's favorite NHL team away from the Oilers as the entire nation followed Selanne's quest to beat the record. Fittingly, Selanne's career-first hat trick had also come in an October game against the Oilers.

And just as famous as the Selanne celebration after his 54th goal of the season, the shooting-down-of-the-glove-in-the-air, almost as famous were the two men in Team Finland sweaters holding signs with "5" and first "3" and then "4" on them, as Selanne scored a hat trick in the game against the Quebec Nordiques.

In the summer of 1993, Selanne was in the papers every day. He raced in a rally under an alias (Teukka Salama, "Teddy Flash"), he toured Finland on 1000 cc motorbikes, he did charity work, played in a tennis tournament, and ran a hockey school or two.

Hockey's popularity skyrocketed in Finland in the early 1990s with record attendance in the Finnish league, and new magazines popping up in the market. On TV, an NHL magazine program brought the highlights to Finns. All that was partly thanks to the rags-to-riches story that was Helsinki Jokerit -- with Teemu as their big building block -- and partly due to Selanne's phenomenal first seasons in the NHL.

And in the fall of 1994, when Selanne returned to Helsinki with the Jets, people lined up on the streets again. Not only to see Teemu, but also to see the Calder Trophy he won after the 1992-93 season, and the Stanley Cup, which made its first visit to Finland.

Everything seems funny 20 years later. We can now go on YouTube and watch those milk commercials. Selanne is working out at the gym and running in the Finnish forest before leaning back on the porch of his sauna, having a glass of milk. It seems so innocent, and Teemu's so young.

The slogan is: "Milk. It doesn't go to your head. It goes to your legs".

Maybe that really is Teemu's secret.
---
(If you want to see this story in its natural habitat, please click here).

Lorem Ristom

Mon, 4 Feb 2013 21:02:13 +0100

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit! Duis elementum neque in sem scelerisque quis dapibus diam adipiscing - very adipiscing. Pellentesque mollis arcu ac enim tincidunt volutpat. Sed facilisis dapibus convallis.

Romanes eunt domus.

Mauris ac lacus quam. Mauris velit velit, Mauri�s veli tempor vel pulvinar et, pharetra in massa. Duis id sem dui. Vivamus facilisis velit vel libero facilisis rutrum. Vestibulum eu nulla in metus vestibulum dapibus. We missed the bus, they missed the bus.

Donec diam velit, molestie nec commodo vel, mattis sed dolor. Nulla in justo at lorem venenatis adipiscing sollicitudin non ligula. Maecenas velit ipsum, bibendum non porta in, ultrices nec eros. Sed et felis nunc. Sed neque tortor, consectetur tincidunt molestie non, accumsan ultricies dolor.

Suspendisse tempus neque id mauris semper sed mattis urna euismod. Nulla fringilla - and I mean nulla fringilla - leo id varius luctus, metus justo dictum diam, quis ultrices risus magna ac nisi. Ut vitae nulla massa. In other words, a whole lotta nothing. Anyway, pellentesque aliquam placerat mi in tempus. Pellentesque id enim eget mauris - and Mauri�s veli - convallis molestie. Nam lacus metus, lacinia at consectetur eget, iaculis vel tellus.

Vestibulum leo nisl, elementum eu euismod ac, and I shall only say this one: consequat in turpis. Duis sagittis interdum varius. Vestibulum vel adipiscing dolor. Nam sed est tortor.

VESTIBULUM!

Oh well, vivamus sagittis, ante et sodales placerat, nisl augue posuere magna, nec viverra risus quam varius leo. Maecenas nec cursus tellus.

Suspendisse tempor�