Hello to everyone who likes to read these roster announcements. Admittedly, they are very similar every season, but I will still continue to post them. Besides, this is my 30th season as part of Team Finland's management so it's a bit of a special tournament.

Right now the SHL playoffs are still ongoing and we're waiting to see who will win the Cup, but it won't be long until IIHF/WJC can start again. Finland has always been very consistent as a team, at least when it comes to our overall roster structure. Not many of our players randomly go inactive or retire unexpectedly, so if someone makes the team they typically stay for quite a long time and have a spot as long as they earn well. This leads to very few roster changes every year. Of course we like to mix young and old, but every now and then people simply 'age out' due to regression, but hopefully retire from the team with at least one medal. In this announcement we will have a good mix of everything again.

Let's start with retirements and other departures from last year's roster. We have one retirement to announce which is no other than Jay O'Neil who joined Team Finland as a transfer from Team USA back in S61 and stayed with us all the way until his retirement last season. One of our all-time greats whose "owner" @Sburbine is also currently our co-fed head so it's only a matter of time until we can welcome his young reincarnation again. Thanks for all your work both as player and coach (we need more medals btw) and see you again soon!

Leaving us due to inactivity, at least for now, are both William Tree and Nash Topalo, but since both aren't officially retired yet, I hope to see one or both of them again.

If you counted correctly three departures means we will get to introduce three rookies in S79. Two of them are home-grown and another one just transferred in and all three are forwards which we desperately needed. Our first two rookies are Teemu Salami @swoosh and Pinli Switchbang @leviadan. Last, but not least is our youngest rookie Stavros Kondos @Ohtaay, originally Greek, now Finnish, who will complete the trio. Welcome to Team Winland!

Filling up foward spots means that this season only one D needs to play F unlike last season. This means Cheeks Klapanen will stay in that position while Kristian Seppanen and Kaarlo Koivunen return to play defense.

There you have it, a nice mix of young and old and we'll try to win another medal for Finland. One more thing - since Nash Topalo used to wear an A and isn't part of the roster this time, the second A will go to Jaromir Jagrbomb this tournament.

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