Originally published on EuroReport.com in 2000 By Lucas Aykroyd For such a nice guy, Teemu Selanne has courted controversy frequently over the last year. On 2 July 1999, he was involved in a car crash that injured the president of the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation. Early in the 1999-2000 season, he seemed disenchanted with the […]

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 2001 By Lucas Aykroyd When you think of Finnish defensemen, what comes to mind? In all likelihood, it’s a long chain of offensive-minded, elegant blueliners like Risto Siltanen, Jyrki Lumme and Kimmo Timonen. But Kari Haakana looks poised to break that mold if he can stick with the Edmonton Oilers […]

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 2001 By Lucas Aykroyd Maybe Jarkko Ruutu is just a bit of a slow starter. Two years in a row, Vancouver Canucks GM Brian Burke predicted the 25-year-old Helsinki native would crack Vancouver’s opening night lineup. But instead, Ruutu ended up in the minors. He’s made his best-ever impression in […]

Originally published in Eishockey News in 2006 By Lucas Aykroyd When Petteri Nummelin was 16 years old, he learned that you should never give up. As the son of Timo Nummelin, the only man ever to be named Finland’s Best Player of the Year in both hockey and soccer, the young Turku-born defenseman faced constant […]

Originally published in Eishockey News in 2007 By Lucas Aykroyd Personal achievements are nice, but when you’re the captain of an NHL team, they don’t mean much. Olli Jokinen has learned that lesson, year after year. In 2005-06, Jokinen’s 89 points signaled his arrival as one of the NHL’s elite power forwards. But his Florida […]

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 1999 By Lucas Aykroyd For Janne Niinimaa, it would be better if a picture didn’t tell a thousand words. Which do you remember better? The Finnish defenseman’s top-notch statistics from 1996-97, when he set a Philadelphia Flyers record for most assists by a rookie by going 4-40-44? Or the image […]

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 2001 By Lucas Aykroyd His taste in entertainment, ranging from WWF wrestling to the movie “Road Trip,” may not be the most intellectual, but Ville Nieminen shows plenty of smarts on the ice. The 23-year-old rookie left wing from Tampere, Finland was recently called up from the Hershey Bears of […]

Originally published on IIHF.com in 2006 By Lucas Aykroyd Sometimes it’s all about quality instead of quantity. The number of European NHLers has declined from 300 (29.5%) in 2003-04 to 262 (27.2%) in 2005-06, but elite talent from the Old World still made a big splash at the 2006 NHL Awards in Vancouver, Canada. At […]

Originally published in Rinkside in 2006 By Lucas Aykroyd July 22, 2005 was a historic day for the future of international hockey. The new Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NHL and NHLPA was ratified then, and it included a clause stipulating that the League would make its players available to participate in both the 2006 […]

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 2000 By Lucas Aykroyd Perhaps we should qualify the saying that “one man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity” in the case of rookie Calgary defenseman Toni Lydman. Derek Morris’s decision to hold out in contract negotiations isn’t exactly a misfortune, but it has allowed Lydman to stake his claim on […]