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Player’s Tribune - Kalevi Karhunen Looks Back On His Life Before the SHL Draft
#1

869 words 2x draft related. This is what happens when an English major gets bored.

It’s a funny thing, trying to find something important to write about when the journalist come knocking on your door to write an autobiographical piece. They ask the same questions… what in your life shaped you to be who are? Who helped you on your way to become a professional hockey player? Who are your heroes? They want those answers to try to figure you out, where you fit, whose legacies you represent and how they fit into the storied history of the SHL. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, the game is played as much off the ice as is it is on. Personalities magnified and aggrandized to sell merchandise and tickets which feed our salaries and lifestyles. Selling myself to pay myself isn’t really that bad in the end, I guess, but it feels a bit nihilistic. But as I heard my name called by the Buffalo Stampede in the SHL Season 46 draft, I wasn’t thinking of any of the heroes I looked up when I was a kid. I wasn’t thinking of the spotlight I’d now have as a future rookie in the SHL and the people dissecting my every minute decision and ranking me against my peers.

I guess I’m rambling a bit, trying to clear the slowglobe of thoughts and feelings sparkling in my head as I lay this on paper. Of course we all have people who help guide us on our way. Usually parents, coaches and friends, people who have the power to affect and direct your life in positive and negative ways. Each player who makes it into the SHL is a kaleidoscope of people and places that drove them to be the way they are today, both physically onway to practice and metaphorically through their support. We’re supposed to regurgitated the safe old answer, what a ‘good ol’ Canadian boy’ would say about his family and friends. But when I look back, the first thing I see down the tunnel of memory, tucked away in a dusty corner, are the pitch black nights of Finnish winter, when the stars gleam so brightly in the sky that the ice is lit up with a cold gleam of black. The nights when your footsteps crunch the snow and offend the silence around you as the forest breaths in quiet. And it isn’t even about the frozen lakes where you played hockey with your friends since the age you could stand, it’s just about that stillness and crisp air that makes the hockey rink feel like home everytime I step in. Its just in me, part of my DNA that drives me.

Moving to California certainly had a big impact on my childhood and my development as a player. I traded the slick iced lakes of rural Finland for dusty basketball courts playing roller hockey with a tennis ball. When I think on those days I just remember the heat, the dust floating in the air coating everyone who was already sweating from the sun. But there was a confidence and brashness to be learned there that Finland didn’t have. A bravado and a style. And while its some parts arrogant, I like to think the parts I took into myself are tempered with serenity of those dark winter nights, a hybrid mix of yin and yang. Skating like the Santa Ana wind, quiet like an owl on the hunt.  

For college, it was a tough call. I almost stayed and went to Santa Barbara. Beaches, waves, surfing, parties like I’d never seen and a population density of a 3rd world country. It was the easy way. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t resist the call of the rink, so I took my scholarship to Michigan. And that place molded me too, but I can’t say as much as my childhood. It was more of a fine tuning, a shaping of an edge that roughly knew what it wanted to be. Anchorage was a bit of a homecoming. The cold and dark were welcoming even when some other rookies found the long nights daunting. Coming to Buffalo wasn’t much different, and between the two I’ll make a new home as I’ve done times before.

Now you may be reading this and thinking how full of myself I am, or how much BS I’ve written down so far, and you might be right. I’m still a rookie coming into the SHL, probably not even playing on an SHL team this season, so what the hell do I know about anything right? For me it isn’t about an external force driving me to success. I know my parents gave me all their support and I obviously couldn’t be the player I am if I hadn’t the time and financial support to achieve my dreams. I should just shut up and say “Yes my coach was my greatest inspiration. My parents taught me right from wrong.” But it’d be boring, and only 5% of the whole. But then again what the hell is this article about? Your guess is as good as mine, but if you’ve made it through with me, I hope you have a better idea of who I am.

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#2

Slick media. Feels real fluid.

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#3

Nice read dude

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#4

karhunen deep af

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#5

Stampede



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#6

Stampede

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