Apparently they pay double this week for IIHF articles so I thought "why not, let's write something" - because you can never have enough money to buy cards. That aside, it's a good time to take a step back and just look at my IIHF career, both as player and manager. I played my first IIHF tournament in season 46 back during the wild STHS times and now we're in the middle of the tournament of season 65 - that's twenty (20) seasons later. I'm still playing. The majority of the tournaments I've played were relatively (okay, very) uneventful, but let's take a look back together and see how good old Carpet has performed over the years. Especially in the later years I should add. After all the IIHF level is the only place where I have won something during my player's career. As far as management goes, I was Finland's Co Fed-Head from S50-S60 and switched to Fed Head after that.
S46:
The first tournament as a young rookie. I shouldn't even have played for the big senior team yet, but Scottey Crawling had two games that didn't go particularly well for him, so I had to jump in and finish the games. One of them I even won (against Japan and against my Lethbridge goalie partner Patrice Nadeau - greetings to Fluw here!). The other one we lost. Finland didn't make it out of round robin unfortunately (but it was very, very close). I also played the entire WJC tournament for Finland, but we weren't very good.
S47:
A rather unevenful tournament for Carpet. Spent the entire round robin on the bench watching Crawfling. We actually made it to the quarter finals (thanks to STHS being as random as it was), but lost 7-1 against Great Britain where I had to jump in after Crawfling let in 4 goals in the first period. Again, I played all games for Finland on the junior team and while we had a slightly better record than the year before, it wasn't good enough for a medal.
S48:
Time for a change? After not playing a single IIHF game the year before, this year I was declared starter and started the majority of the games. Well, we were even worse than the year before, so let's quickly forget this tournament (cough, last place, cough). For a third and last time I played in the WJC tournament and while it was better than the IIHF equivalent, it wasn't "good enough".
S49:
This year was special for me. I was a rookie in the SHL (and immediately starter for Toronto) and the only goalie who played for Finland at IIHF that year (it was Scottey's time to sit on the bench). I guess that's what you get for being active? We won 6 games and lost 6 games, that's all I have to say about this tournament.
S50:
What else do you get for being active? I got offered the Co Fed-Head position and took it. At this point I was still the only active goalie for Finland, but we still weren't a good team. We only won two games. What can you buy for that? Last place, you guessed it.
S51:
Still a semi-shitty team. Didn't make the medal round. Next!
S52:
At least one thing was new this year; we had new players! Some names that are even still on the team (rookies like Jukka Timonen who is now our team captain btw). It was the huge S53 draft class. I also had a new goalie partner in White Goodman - who didn't get any starts yet. I had my first IIHF level shutout, but that didn't help the team either. It was close, but we missed the medal round again. Big sigh.
S53:
Imagine a cut here, because things were very different from this point on. It was the switch from STHS to FHM6. It didn't help us very much, we were still stuck somewhere at the bottom.
S54:
I know it's getting boring and repetitive, but we weren't a very good team this year either. You could also call it a rebuild, because essentially what's what we were doing here. These things take time.
S55:
We sucked again. But hey, Latvia was even worse. It was JURT's IIHF debut too, I think that's worth mentioning.
S56:
We decided that Goodman was finally good enough to start some games, so we had our first 50:50 split. That didn't quite go as planned, since we still only won two games.
S57:
Goodman got a handful of starts again and managed to win his first game. For a struggling team these little things can be highlights, too. We weren't good enough to get to the medal round however.
S58:
We finished last - again. This is really boring, I'm sorry. It's even more frustrating when you're in 'management' and there isn't much you can do. It wasn't going that much better on the SHL side either, but this was probably the one good chance Toronto had to get anywhere in the playoffs during my career there.
S59:
We almost made the medal rounds. I feel like we've been here before. Better than before, but still not good enough. Our roster was getting better though since we had lots of young players joining us. Rebuilds take time. Rebuilds are hard.
S60:
MEDAL ROUND! We finally were good enough to get back there. Goodman had four starts and won all four games (that was good, man!). For me - purely looking at numbers - this was my best tournament with a 2.0 GAA and a 0.941 SV% (not counting the 0.976 SV% I had in S46 when I finished Crawling's one game). I won best goalie at this tournament, too. Oh right, we lost 8-4 against Japan in the quarter finals....
S61:
Enough is enough. At least for WBF's time as our head I moved from Co to Fed-Head and JURT became the new Co (and really the FHM-brains in the background). It was a smart move for us and essentially we work as a team and share responsibilities (double-headed you could call it). This is really the season where Winland becamed Winland. Why? Because we won our first medal since basically forever (i.e. since S44). It only took 16 seasons, but old Carpet finally won something. A Bronze medal is no Cup, but it's an achievement. We got it by kicking out Sweden, that made it feel even better (sorry, Sweden friends ). I again won best goalie. Oh and Mat Smith made his debut as backup goalie for Finland.
S62:
Winland is here and Winland can't be stopped. I probably have to thank JURT a.k.a. JUST for this (and the whole team and everyone else involved behind the scenes of course), but we finally won Gold this year (against Canada)!! Felt really good after those long years and it shows that you should never give up.
S63:
Right, that's another year we can ignore. We did make the medal rounds, but that's all.
S64:
You're never too old to... win GOLD again! Against Sweden! It's still a little hard to believe that we're now one of the good teams.
S65:
I think not even Jim knows the answer to this one yet.
Carpet is currently deep in regression, but not dead yet and ready to play more tournaments with Finland either in a 1A/1B position (what we've been doing these last few years) or as backup to Smith.
For full stats you can check the dropdown in my sig. Finland's team records can be found here.
Thanks for reading.
Carpy48
I moved from Co to Fed-Head and JURT became the new Co (and really the FHM-brains in the background). It was a smart move for us and essentially we work as a team and share responsibilities (double-headed you could call it). This is really the season where Winland becamed Winland. Why? Because we won our first medal since basically forever (i.e. since S44). It only took 16 seasons, but old Carpet finally won something. A Bronze medal is no Cup, but it's an achievement. We got it by kicking out Sweden, that made it feel even better (sorry, Sweden friends ![[Image: zS2lCMp.png]](https://i.imgur.com/zS2lCMp.png)
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