Finnish Ice Hockey Research Articles

Journalistic Framing of Finnish Ice Hockey Club Jokerit in the Russian-Led Kontinental Hockey League

One of the major franchises in Finland’s top division in men’s ice hockey (Liiga), Jokerit Helsinki, sold its home arena and half of its shares to Finnish-Russian oligarchs in 2013. Jokerit also switched to the Russian-led Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and competed there from 2014 to 2022. Russia’s KHL project and its expansion to the West can be viewed as a form of soft power. This study delves into the journalistic coverage of Jokerit during two specific periods: Its early days in the KHL and its later stages when exiting the league. These periods coincide with critical geopolitical events, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), Belarusian protests (2020–2021), and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (2022). Our data consists of Jokerit-related articles in the newspaper <em>Helsingin Sanomat</em> as well as interviews of the journalists who followed the team closely. We explore the critical socio-political coverage of Jokerit in <em>Helsingin Sanomat</em> during these periods and investigate whether the sports journalists recognized the broader geopolitical context of the KHL project and, if so, how this influenced their reporting. Utilizing the framing theory, we identified five frames under which to divide the articles: (a) sports events, (b) international relations, (c) power and governance, (d) business, and (e) unity. The sports event frame predominated during the early KHL era, whereas international relations and power and governance frames only emerged later. These shifts were not initiated by sports journalists but resulted from the efforts of journalists in other fields and increased the societal scrutiny of ties to Russia.

Coaching Across Borders: Lessons From Finnish High-Performance Ice Hockey Coaches

Sport coaching has become globalized. Finnish ice hockey is an example of this globalization of a coaching workforce. Indeed, the success of Finnish ice hockey teams in the international arena has been fueling the demand for coaches and players from this country worldwide. Yet, despite the increasing trends of migration of the workforce in sports, there is limited research that is conducted on the experiences of foreign coaches. Thus, in this study, we aimed to expand our understanding of the work of high-performance coaches in the globalized sports context. A case study design was adopted. The participants were 14 Finnish high-performance head coaches with transnational career experiences across 11 nations. Qualitative data were collected via semistructured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis guided how the authors made sense of these data. Three major themes were (a) preparation practices, (b) acculturation, and (c) emerging learning experiences. The findings provide helpful insights for (a) coach developers when preparing practitioners to work in different cultural settings, (b) club administrators to further inform their decisions when recruiting and working with foreign coaches, and (c) sports’ governing bodies to develop policies to support coaches’ acculturation in the new country.

Perceptions and preferences of experienced security in mass urban events – What's technology got to do with it?

Mass spectator events are part of contemporary urban life, and security issues are increasingly integral to them. Most of the related research has focused on security management and technological development. However, prior studies have shown that subjectively experienced security plays an elemental role in urban life. We present an explanatory study of 880 participants' perceptions and preferences of security and technology usage in spectator events in our online survey in December 2021. The context of the study was Finnish ice hockey games held in a new sports/multi-purpose arena. Results indicate that gender, age and familiarity impact the eventgoer's preferences and security experience. Experienced security is also found to be connected to the ease and flow of interaction with technology and urban space. We conclude with recommendations that recognise the complexity of event security in urban settings without compromising the needs of different spectator groups.

Self-Regulation in High-Level Ice Hockey Players: An Application of the MuSt Theory.

The purpose of the study was to examine the validity of core action elements and feeling states in ice hockey players in the prediction of performance. A second aim of the study was to explore the effectiveness of a 30-day program targeting action and emotion regulation. Participants were male ice hockey players drawn from two teams competing at the highest level of the junior Finnish ice hockey league. They were assigned to a self-regulation (n = 24) and a control (n = 19) group. The self-regulation program focused on the recreation of optimal execution of core action elements and functional feeling states. Separate repeated measures MANOVAs indicated significant differences in ratings of perceived control and execution accuracy ratings of self-selected visual and behavioral components of the action (critical for optimal performance) and psychobiosocial (feeling) states across recalled best and worst games. Results support the use of both action- and emotion-centered strategies for performance enhancement. Future research including psychophysiological markers is warranted.

Assembling Success: Desire, Worker Mobility, and Value Creation in Finnish Ice Hockey

AbstractBuilding on Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theories, this paper offers an ethnography of work focused on a professional ice hockey team in Finland, where hockey is the leading sport in terms of popularity and economic investment. It is an analysis of the everyday investments in developing individual players’ skills and in building teams capable of high levels of cooperation under conditions of unpredictability. By looking at team formation as an emergent set of practices, materialities, discourses, and affects, we are better able to account for how corporations of this kind mitigate the deterritorializing effects of player mobility through processes of reterritorialization. As such, the analysis offers insights into modalities of value creation in a corporate model that relies not only on the constant improvement of worker performance in ways that can be easily measured but also on intangible facets of worker collaboration that manifest as collective desire.

Nurturing and sidelining capitalism in discourses of player potentiality in Finnish ice hockey

Ice hockey is an established site for talent identification and development in Finland. In this ethnographic study, I examine the discourses that top gatekeepers of Finnish elite junior hockey construct and favour with respect to the human capital potentiality of ice hockey players. Building upon Foucauldian discourse analysis, the study identified two competing discourses within the Finnish ice hockey domain. The dominant one considers a player to be a capital investment, and the aim is symbolic and economic success; the lesser, but still very vital, discourse looks at a player as an individual with potential that can be nurtured with the right attitudes and conditions. Together, these discourses create a social space in which up-and-coming hockey players’ talents are identified and decisions are made about their possible future athletic careers. These conflicting discourses create tensions for coaches—that is, whether they must obey commercial logic despite their own motivation for working with junior athletes.

Jokerit’s move to KHL: an odd momentum in the commercialization of Nordic elite ice hockey

The article is set to target several tensions, problems and possibilities in Finnish (and Nordic) men’s elite ice hockey, which have arisen due to increasing commercialization and professionalization. This process has accelerated simultaneously with the recent development and advances of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), in addition to the constant and general influences of NHL (i.e., Americanization). Thus, the essay will focus on Jokerit as an illustrative case. To state, Jokerit, founded in 1967, is a powerhouse in Finnish ice hockey, both sportingly and financially. The commercialization of Finnish elite ice hockey culminated in 2014/2015 when Jokerit joined KHL. This article reflects on Jokerit’s financial and legal challenges, as well as the commercial press and progress in Nordic elite ice hockey and thus on Jokerit’s drift towards KHL. In addition to these topics, the essay presents and discusses different aspects of the progress of KHL, as well as its reasons and consequences.

Strong entrepreneurial focus and internationalization – the way to success for Finnish ice hockey: the case of JYP ice hockey team

Ice hockey is the most professionalized sport in Finland, and it has had an important effect on the overall sports development in Finland. The national ice hockey league was the first league to professionalize in Finland, and it is the most widely followed sport in terms of spectator numbers and media coverage. Internationalization and entrepreneurship have played a remarkable role in the development of Finnish ice hockey. Internationalization has been influenced, first, by the North American National Hockey League (NHL), and later by the Russian Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and Europe’s Champions Hockey League (CHL). The establishment of entrepreneurially driven limited companies amongst ice hockey leagues at the turn of the century was a pivotal point for professionalization and commercialization in Finnish ice hockey. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of internationalization on one successful entrepreneurially driven Finnish ice hockey club, JYP ice hockey team, by demonstrating its path from a small-town club to a multi-time Finnish Champion and Finland’s first European Trophy (2014) and Champions Hockey League (2018) winner.

‘School, family and then hockey!’ Coaches’ views on dual career in ice hockey

Despite the extensive research into coaches’ roles in supporting athletic development and motivation for sport, few studies have examined coaches’ attitudes and practices towards athletes’ dual careers. The present study extends European research into athletes’ dual careers by examining Finnish ice hockey coaches’ attitudes and practices surrounding players’ education. Ten male coaches aged 27–52 participated in semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed with an existential-narrative theoretical framework and with thematic and structural narrative analysis. Three composite vignettes were created entitled ‘supporting athletic development and players in reaching their own goals’, ‘enjoyment and physically active lifestyle’ and ‘developing good persons’. The analysis revealed that although all coaches embraced the official rhetoric where school is a priority over ice hockey, most of them had few practical examples of how this view had informed their coaching practice. It is concluded that young players may be easily lured into dreams of professionalism, whereas coaches’ dominant narrative of education as a back-up may be ineffective to spark athletes’ interest and engagement with education.

How to develop holistic satisfaction in Finnish ice hockey business as a special SME business?

The businesses of professional ice hockey clubs in Finland have recently encountered some criticism. Clubs and other ice hockey organisations as well are blamed for being just messing around things instead of concentrating on systematic business management. This research approached that subject by examining the concept of holistic satisfaction of the Finnish ice hockey business environment. The concerned representatives were asked to determine their own view of importance of the examined factors affecting the performance of professional ice hockey clubs. On the basis of these interviews, a new holistically satisfactory business model for professional ice hockey clubs was established. In this model, the importance of management was clearly emphasised. Although the study focused on ice hockey business, the results can be exploited in some types of traditional SME's as well. As earlier studies of SME business development have creditably approached the topic from traditional point of view with quite a direct link to traditional business administration (Li and Qian, 2003; Lin, Tseng and Wu, 2003; McDevitt, 2003), our creative approach adds a convenient breath of fresh air to the SME business research.

Injuries to the upper extremity in ice hockey: analysis of a series of 760 injuries.

Injuries to the upper extremity are common in ice hockey. To investigate the mechanisms, types, and severity of upper extremity ice hockey injuries in patients in different age categories. Retrospective cohort study. We analyzed 760 consecutive upper extremity injuries in Finnish ice hockey players reported to an insurance company during 1996. The overall injury rate of upper extremity injuries was 14.8 per 1000 player-years; 70% occurred during games. Of the 861 injury types, 32% were contusions, 28% sprains or strains, and 27% fractures. Checking or other collisions with players caused 76% of the injuries to the shoulder (170 of 223), 55% of the injuries to the elbow (35 of 64), and 45% of the injuries to the distal extremity (213 of 473). Of the 561 injuries with known severity, 38% were major. The injury risk increased significantly with age, from players younger than 12 years to players 25 to 29 years of age. The injury profile among 15- to 19-year-old players was similar to that of adult players. Injuries to the upper extremity are relatively serious because of the high number of shoulder injuries and fractures. The frequency of injuries increased with age. A considerable proportion of upper extremity injuries was caused by body checking.

Injury profile in ice hockey from the 1970s through the 1990s in Finland.

The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence, types, and mechanisms of injury in Finnish ice hockey players at the highest competition level in different decades. Several teams were observed prospectively during the seasons between 1976 and 1979, and in the 1988 to 1989 and 1992 to 1993 seasons. An injury was defined as any sudden trauma requiring examination and treatment by a physician. The inclusion criteria were the same during the entire study. A total of 641 injuries were recorded. The injury rate per game increased significantly from 54 per 1000 player-hours in the 1970s to 83 per 1000 player-hours in the 1990s. The injury profile in the 1980s and 1990s differed from that in the 1970s. Per 1000 player-years, the rate of contusions as well as of sprains or strains increased significantly with each decade. Checking and unintentional collision with an opponent were common mechanisms of injury throughout the study, and the rate of injury by these mechanisms has continually increased. In conclusion, we suggest that there has been an increase in rough body contact between players, causing an alarming increase in the rate of ice hockey injuries.

Peacemakers: those who would intervene to quell a sports riot

Male spectators ( N = 129) attending a Finnish ice hockey game were asked to indicate their response to a fight erupting nearby in the stands. Fully 61.1% indicated they would watch, 26.2% would try to stop the fight, 5.6% would leave the area, 4.7% would encourage the fighters and 2.4% would join in. Peacemakers were compared with onlookers and found to be less physically aggressive. However, they were equally angry, impulsive and had equivalent histories of fighting. Compared with a category of troublemakers, peacemakers were less aggressive, angry and impulsive, and were taller.

Ice hockey injuries in Finland. A prospective epidemiologic study.

In this prospective study of ice hockey injuries in Finland we have investigated the incidence of injury at two playing levels and the causal factors, mechanisms, types, and consequences of the injuries. Seven Finnish ice hockey teams were observed during the 1988 to 1989 season. There were a total of 189 injuries. There were 134 injuries in 4 teams of the highest level, the Finnish National League, and 55 injuries in 3 teams of the second highest level, Division I. The incidence of injuries during games was 66 per 1000 player-game hours in the National League and 36 per 1000 player-game hours in Division I. As for severity, 10 (5%) injuries were classified as major. Of all injuries, 15 (8%) were fractures and 34 (18%) were to the head or face. The most severe injuries were tears of a knee ligament or fractures of an upper extremity. Ongoing surveillance and an exact reporting system are needed for establishing the trends in the number and severity of the injuries.