from Risto Pakarinen at IIHF.com,

In all honesty, it’s a bit of a mismatch. There’s Joensuu, a mid-sized Finnish university town, 400 kilometres north of Helsinki, so close to the Russian border that stores have started to add Russian signs to help the tourists. It’s a sports town for sure, and a hockey town absolutely.

Then there’s Esa Tikkanen, a brash Helsinki native, the son of an arena worker, and a five-time Stanley Cup champion with the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Rangers.

When Jokipojat, the Joensuu team playing in Mestis, the division just below SM-liiga, found themselves in a losing streak, and chasing a playoffs spot from afar, the club fired their coach during the November international break, had the assistant coach take over for a while, and after two weeks of different rumours and speculations, named Tikkanen the head coach in December, two days after Christmas.

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