The Next Ones

by Michael Traikos

  “The passion is the number one thing,” said Juha Juujärvi, Laine’s coach in the Mestis league. “There are only a few young players in Finnish hockey that I have ever met or coached that have such big passion to score and such big passion to play with the puck. After every practice he wanted to play with the puck. Some players, when the practice ends, their eyes light up and they want to go. But Patrik was one of those guys who was still there every time wanting to play with the puck and shoot.”

  “I think the [biggest] strength that he has is he’s such a worker,” said Lauri Marjamäki, who was Finland’s head coach at the World Cup of Hockey. “He’s training with passion. He knows all the time what he needs. I’m sure he will be better next year than the previous year, because all the time he’s thinking how he can improve his game and improve his body. There are a lot of good years coming with Patrik.”

  Laine stayed late after practice and spent hours in his backyard taking shots. But he also went to school. He studied Ovechkin’s one-timer, breaking down YouTube clips so that he could get the puck to fly off his stick in the same manner. “It’s timing and rhythm,” Finnish-born skills coach Pertti Hasanen said of Laine’s release. “He doesn’t skate at all. It’s just his arms and his core. You’ve got to flex your stick and then snap your shot off. He has that down to a science.”

  Laine wasn’t just influenced by Ovechkin’s shot. He loved everything about the Russian superstar—from his yellow tinted visor to the way he bounced off the boards to celebrate goals. Ovechkin was unlike any of the players Laine had grown up playing with or against. He was confident and cocky. Here was a player who would bang his stick on the ice to call for a pass, who would hang his leg over the bench tempting the coach to put him into the game, who took as many shots as he wanted. Ovechkin wasn’t just the best player, he also knew he was the best player.

  It wasn’t that the Washington Capitals sniper was selfish. He just knew that if the team needed a goal, he was the one who should have the puck on his stick. Laine started to think the same way. He wanted to be the go-to guy. He loved the feeling of scoring, but even more than that he loved the feeling of being counted on to help his team win games. And like Ovechkin, he wasn’t shy about pounding his chest.

  It wasn’t just his goal-scoring exploits that attracted scouts. He was tall and lanky and liked to use his impressive size to dole out hits—something that other kids just weren’t doing. Plus, he really liked to celebrate his success, often jumping against the glass and pumping his fist after a goal. In a country where the mood of the people resembled the weather—overcast and lacking in sunshine—this stood out almost as much as his powerful shot.

  “If I want to do something, I’m going to do it,” said Laine. “I’m not going to ask everybody else. But obviously in a good way. I’m not going to do anything stupid just because I want to do it.” There’s stubbornness there. There’s also a confidence. Both got Laine into trouble at times.

  In Europe, where the ice surface is much larger and the game resembles a soccer match, a shoot-first mentality is a foreign concept. Players are taught to work the puck around, like pieces on a chessboard, waiting for an opening to attack. Laine took a more aggressive approach, even if it didn’t always lead to victory. “From the age of probably fourteen he was trying to shoot from every angle and trying the one-timer,” said Jonatan Tanus, a former teammate. “Right now, he’s maybe thinking a little more when to shoot. But back then, he was shooting from pretty much everywhere.”

  “There was a little bit of noise about how he was so individual,” said Grönstrand. “I don’t know much about what happened then, but when you’re a young kid you make some mistakes. When he went to the big team and started to play there, he changed a lot. He started to grow up.”

  To North Americans, Laine is another Teemu Selänne. But in Finland, where his face is already on billboards, he is much more. He represents a new generation and a new wave of thinking. It’s okay to celebrate and have fun. Teamwork is still important, but in today’s NHL, you cannot win without individual game-breakers. Laine didn’t always back up his words. Earlier on, he sometimes made noise for the wrong reasons. A defining moment in his career occurred at the 2014 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament, when he was kicked off his team for reportedly threatening to kill his coach for not playing him. According to Laine, it didn’t exactly happen that way.

  Finland, which finished fifth in the tournament, had been playing the US for a chance to go to the semifinal. But Laine, who had been prone to giveaways and high-risk plays, couldn’t get off the bench and his team lost 9–4. He finished with 1 goal in 3 games. He was frustrated and lost it. After the end of the game, Laine removed his glove and gave the middle finger to the coach when he wasn’t looking. But Laine said he didn’t threaten his life, just told a couple of teammates that he’d sure like to punch him or something, which got the broken telephone treatment when reporters caught wind of what happened. “It was big news, actually,” said Finnish reporter Juha Hiitelä. “I think it started as pretty small news, but then when people started to realize what was said and that it was something that doesn’t normally happen, it became a bigger story.”

  “Yeah, that was kind of a tough spot for a teenager to handle,” said Laine. “But if you think about it now, I think it’s only a good thing that it happened, because at the time I noticed the not-so-fun side of media. It wasn’t funny at all. I’ve seen that when I was young. It made me careful.”

  * * *

  I think mentally he was wanting to win every game. And he was mad at himself if he didn’t score goals and when he was mad at himself he then started yelling at parents and coaches and everyone else. But it was because he wanted to win. That’s all he wanted. — Marko Ojanen, assistant coach, Tappara Tampere

  * * *

  How did Laine go from getting kicked off national and club teams to winning the World Junior Championship and being named MVP in the top Finnish league? He grew up. And he got help. But before that, he had to take another step backward. At sixteen years old, Laine was not good enough to play for Tappara’s main team in the SM-liiga (the Finnish elite league) but he was also too good to go back to junior. So Tappara loaned him to LeKi in the second division, where he could still play against men and develop. It was supposed to be an easy transition, but it ended up becoming one of the most difficult—and important—years in Laine’s career.

  From the very beginning, his reputation as a problem child preceded him. “I didn’t know him,” said Juha Juujärvi, a coach with LeKi. “I talked to the coach with Tappara’s main team and they said they had a young, talented guy and to take care of him. There was huge media because Patrik had some problems with the national team. Tappara said that they wanted to help him.”

  Laine struggled at the start. The moves that had worked against junior-aged players no longer worked when playing against men. He was trying too much on his own, taking too many shots and causing too many turnovers. He was also putting too much pressure on himself. In his mind, he was there to develop, which meant he was there to score goals and win games. When he didn’t do that, he tried to force matters and ended up playing even worse. Laine scored 5 goals and 7 assists in 36 games that season, but he was also a minus-12.

  To help Laine understand just how much he was hurting the team with his selfish play, Juujärvi began printing off game reports and highlighting two columns: shots and turnovers. “Patrik led in shots almost every time. He would shoot about eight times every game,” said Juujärvi. “But turnovers were bad for him—even ten sometimes. He had so many turnovers and it caused so many problems, like what the fuck’s he doing? Why didn’t he pass or put the puck in deep? He always wanted to win one-on-one situations.”

  For Laine, it was a dark time. He knew he was letting the team down. But he also knew he was letting himself down. The goals weren’t coming as easily as they had previously. After the Ivan Hlinka tournament, he was getting a reputation as a player you couldn�
�t win with. The more he struggled, the more he tried to do everything on his own. It kept snowballing until he felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  Juujärvi took a tough approach. He cared about Laine and wanted to see him tap the potential that everyone could see he had, but Juujärvi also knew that unless Laine was willing to put the team ahead of his own points, the youngster would never achieve his goal of making the NHL. After a 3–2 loss in which Laine had turned the puck over in the second period for the winning goal, Juujärvi sat Laine on the bench and told him, “You will not play anymore today. I don’t want to see that kind of hockey ever.”

  It was like a father telling his son that he had disappointed him. Laine didn’t say anything back. He knew he had cost the team the win, knew that he was failing, knew that his chances of making the NHL were quickly slipping through his fingers. On the bus ride back to Tampere, a sixteen-year-old Laine was so upset that he told another player that he wanted to quit. Nothing was working. The more he tried, the worse it got.

  Before it got better, it got even worse. LeKi had qualified as the last seed for the playoffs. But with the series tied 1–1, Juujärvi made Laine a healthy scratch for Game 3, not trusting that Laine could play a mistake-free game. The team won and Laine returned to Tappara’s junior team. Fourteen months later, he would lead Tappara’s main team to a league championship, winning playoff MVP. But at the time, some wondered where his career was heading. “To be honest, everyone saw the potential,” said Tanus, “but I would think it would probably take three years more.”

  “We never destroyed his dream,” said Juujärvi. “We cared about him. I saw every time that he wanted to develop and he got better and better.” Indeed, Laine didn’t quit. And Tappara didn’t give up on him. Instead, they challenged him to get fitter and faster. He cut out ice cream (though he would have half a bowl of Skittles ice cream to celebrate his first NHL hat trick) and worked with a power skating coach to refine a labouring stride.

  “His skating was a big issue. He’s a big guy and he grew fast,” said Tappara head coach Jussi Tapola. “His skating was very lousy. He couldn’t skate in the league. What we did was work with him on the technical skills with how he turns and how fast he can be with the first step.”

  In addition to his speed, the team also worked on his psyche. It seemed to be even more flawed. Laine started working with a mental coach. Even more than his deadly shot, it might be the reason why he’s in the NHL today. “That’s the thing exactly. I’m actually very hard on myself,” said Laine. “I’m assuming that every time I’m on the ice that I need to score. Every shot I take I need to score. It’s hard sometimes but I think it’s only a good thing that you are hard on yourself because you’re pushing yourself.” Those expectations were amplified at the lower levels, where Laine knew he was being counted on to produce offensively. At times, it became a burden.

  Laine spent a full year with the mental coach by his side. They talked before and after games. The main topic of conversation was Laine’s offensive production and the mountains of pressure he put on himself to score. Up until then, Laine believed he was put on the ice for just one purpose: to put the puck in the net. If he scored, he believed he had played a good game regardless of whether the team won or lost. If he didn’t score, he felt like a failure. “It was the worst game for me,” was a common Laine phrase, even after a win.

  The mental coach explained he was looking at it wrong. Scoring was obviously important, but it represented a snapshot of the entire picture. It was what you did when you were not scoring that truly defined you as a player. “He told me that when you score, it’s only a couple of seconds out of your ice time during the game,” said Laine. “So if you play nineteen minutes, you have to play 18:55 the proper way. You have to do all the little things on the ice when you’re not scoring. You can help your team to win when you’re not scoring. You can do a lot of good things still. That’s the thing I tried to remember the past couple of years, that I can help my team to win even if I’m not scoring.”

  Tapola also helped with the mental side. He stripped away any and all expectations from Laine. What Tapola wanted—what he expected—was for Laine to understand the rhythm of the game. There is a time to try going around a player in a one-on-one situation and there is a time to shoot, but there are also times where the best play is to dump the puck in deep and cut your losses. “We always knew that if he got the mental side of the game and he understood how to play the game, he would be a top player in the SM-liiga and in the NHL,” said Tapola. “But it always was the mental side of the game. He was frustrated all the time and it was up and down all game.”

  Tapola also introduced Laine to a technique called “shot-blocking” which previously had been a foreign concept to a forward who rarely ventured into the defensive zone. The adjustments weren’t easy. Laine had been a high-stakes gambler his entire life and now he was told to play the penny slots? It took some learning. “We lost some games because of him,” said Tapola. “It was like his junior games. But when we talked about that, we told him he has everything—he has the skills—but he had to understand the momentums of the game. He understood that he wants to play a big part in the game and play in the last minute and be the guy scoring goals.”

  Tapola wasn’t just teaching “boring” defence. Tapola’s greatest strength as a coach was recognizing what he had in Laine. His shot was special. You don’t limit that—you exploit it. Whereas other coaches had benched him for what they viewed as “giving up the puck,” Tapola encouraged him to fire at will as long as there was traffic in front of the net.

  That often wasn’t a problem. “He’s the kind of guy who when he gets over the blue line, he mostly shoots,” said Tapola. “If there’s a guy who’s going to the net, it’s good that he shoots. But if there’s no one that’s going to the net, then he should do something else. Of course, the guys that played with him would accelerate to the net as soon as they crossed the blue line. Nobody has a shot like that. Even if the goaltender stops it, he gives him good rebounds and stuff like that. The goalies can’t handle it. When you have a player like that, you have to play differently. And it’s smart to play differently.”

  Laine scored 17 goals and 33 points in 46 games for Tappara, but it was after returning as a hero from the World Junior Championship that his season really took off. “He was an absolute monster,” teammate Nick Plastino said of Laine’s playoff run, in which he scored 10 goals and 15 points in 18 games to lead the team to a championship. “I remember some guys telling me in training camp that there was this young kid named Patrik Laine and that he was a good player, but wasn’t the best skater and how he couldn’t make the team the previous year,” said Plastino. “I didn’t really notice him at first. But as the year went on, I don’t know what he did but he was unbelievable. He peaked so fast. I guess he finally figured out that he was that good and that he could take that next step.”

  It wasn’t that Laine realized he was that good. It was that the team finally did. By the end of the year, Laine had not only become the best player in the country, he was setting himself up to be the second overall pick in the draft. “He’s not always listening to the coach,” said Tanus. “He was never asking questions to the coach. He knows he’s good and he was doing what he thinks is the best. And that’s how he proved himself. He showed everyone that he is a great player and a superstar.”

  * * *

  The focus used to be on systems and team play. Now, the focus is on individual skill and how you read and react. You just have to play the game like it’s supposed to be played. You have to make decisions by yourself and read and react and do things accordingly. The focus is on individuals more than on team play. Patrik Laine was part of that. — Jukka Jalonen, Finland’s 2015 World Junior Championship coach

  * * *

  Of course, Teemu Selänne was waiting for Laine. He had just seen Finland win gold at the World Junior Championship and, standing in the bowels of Hartwall Ar
ena, where a couple of days earlier he had been inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame, Selänne was waiting to shake the hand of the player he called “the future of Finnish hockey.”

  When the World Junior Championship had begun a few weeks earlier, no one could have expected that Finland would win gold or that a pair of seventeen-year-olds—Laine and Jesse Puljujärvi—who were too young to order a pint of Lapin Kulta premium lager and still had to wear full face masks, would be leading the tournament in scoring. As most observers had said, it was too bad Finland had to be hosting this year when the team was so young and so raw.

  Expectations were low for Laine and Puljujärvi as they were heading into a tournament that was typically dominated by nineteen-year-olds. “We wanted them to play with confidence and not worry about making mistakes,” said coach Jukka Jalonen. “Just enjoy the game and have fun. They really did that.” Jalonen put Laine and Puljujärvi together because “they were both in their draft year, so they wanted to help each other succeed.” But they needed a centre. That’s where Sebastian Aho, who would later join the NHL with the Carolina Hurricanes, fit in. A natural winger, he moved to the middle where his primary goal was to get Laine the puck.

  “I think they’re brothers somehow,” teammate Kasperi Kapanen said of Laine, Puljujärvi and Aho. “They’re just not telling us that they’re brothers. They just know where each other are and I just laugh on the bench when they score. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”