Ensio Kalju´s introduction to the hockey world came by starting to learn how to skate first at the age of 5, but due to winters being not so good at times and the local ice rink crew spending more time sitting in their warm little workspaces, shooting the puck without skates on quickly moved to number one hockey-related hobby. Nobody had any goalie equipment, so mostly it was shooting to the empty net to see who could get the puck to rise even a little bit.

Shooting the puck is what Ensio liked to do, eventually, it became a strength of his. Skating, on the other hand, lagged behind, poor ice quality as mentioned was perhaps the biggest reason, but what you lose in skating you can make up by positioning correctly and in general studying the game.

Ensio did not join any kind of junior teams until he was around 12. Before that, it was just skating or shooting around in the local rink whenever there was even a little bit of ice. Of course, watching hockey from television was a popular way to enjoy the game, at the time they showed one game per week of the Finnish hockey league for the whole of Finland, all the kids usually watched that game.

Kalju was never a natural, but with hard work he was able to keep going and eventually play on the professional level.