Saku Koivu dreams of the Stanley Cup

Montreal Canadiens captain has coped well with the pressures of publicity

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By Heikki Miettinen
     
      In Milan or Madrid it is possible to find sporting life beyond football, but in Montreal, ice hockey grabs all the attention that is going. Saku Koivu, the captain of the Finnish national team in the current World Cup of Hockey, has lived in the middle of the Canadian news maelstrom for the past nine years. And he has learnt the art of survival.
      "Well, you have to. If I hadn’t learnt, I wouldn’t have been there a decade", says Koivu at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, as we chat before the Finnish national squad take to the ice for a training session.
      Koivu has a year left on his contract with the Montreal Canadiens. The NHL season will start when it starts (and possibly IF it starts, for the players’ collective bargaining agreement runs out in a fortnight’s time), but Koivu’s contract is set in stone. When the puck drops, Koivu will be setting out on his tenth quest for the Stanley Cup.
     
"My dream is to win the Stanley Cup in Montreal and no place else. In the last few years we have seen examples of players going off to seek the Cup from other teams, and it never comes", says Koivu.
      "I tend to see things more in the light of how happy I am in a place, and if the team’s future hopes rely on me among others, then I see no reason to leave."
      "When time passes you by in a team, then you have to go out in search of new challenges and motivation. But I haven’t reached that day yet", says Koivu.
      Koivu’s faith in one day lifting the coveted trophy was reinforced by the examples of Calgary and Tampa Bay, who surprisingly made it all the way through last season’s play-offs. The final round pairing of the Flames and the Lightning showed that Montreal’s day in the sun could come at any time.
     
The life and times of center Saku Koivu changed a great deal in the fall of 1999, when he was appointed as the Canadiens’ captain, at the age of just 24.
      Koivu began to get a large slice of the club’s spokesman tasks, giving statements to the media and also shaping the team’s public image. And every evening he had to lead by example on the ice.
      He has kept the C on his shirt through several seasons that have been blighted by illness or injury. Koivu’s career has featured more events, good and bad, than many people fit into an entire lifetime.
     
"Yes, I guess getting the captaincy was something of a surprise, when I was only 24. Add to that the fact that I’m a European and that I don’t speak French... yes, it was a pretty astonishing turn of events. It’s hard to grasp the significance of it even now, but maybe it’ll become clearer when my playing career is done", says Koivu.
      "I mean, when you go down the list of Montreal captains... it’s not a bad group to say you belong to."
      The quartet that Koivu would really like to join, however, is that of Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, Bob Gainey, and Guy Carbonneau. These four are not just former Montreal captains from past decades; they have all held aloft the Stanley Cup while wearing a red Canadiens jersey.
     
Though being chosen captain was a big thing for Koivu, he really had to look at life through new eyes in the autumn of 2001, when he was taken ill on a flight from Finland to Canada on his way to start the new season.
      The diagnosis when it came was not good: non-Hodgkin intra-abdominal lymphoma.is a big C of a very different kind. Recovery was painful and it took almost the entire 2001-2002 season, but the cancer could as easily have taken his life, too.
      Hard-bitten hockey jocks were shocked and stunned at the announcement of his illness and wished him well, and Koivu himself fought the disease tooth and nail. When he emerged on the other side after chemotherapy, and made his return to the Canadiens squad in April 2002, it was an emotional night all round.
      Koivu now speaks openly about that difficult time, but he doesn’t make a song and dance about it.
     
"My attitude towards hockey has changed in the sense that it is no longer of such paramount importance. Getting sick gave me a more relaxed approach to life. Having a couple of bad games here and there doesn’t mean as much to me now as it did when I was 20 or so", explains Koivu.
      He underwent a long and wearing course of treatment throughout the winter of 2001-2002. The Salt Lake City Olympics were naturally off the agenda, but when Koivu did come back, he tore into the play-offs opposition with a vengeance, scoring 4+6 as Montreal enjoyed a reasonable run, beating Boston before losing in six games to Carolina.
      "My playing style calmed down a bit and I lost some of that youthly rushing about everywhere. Maybe I play with a bit less wild abandon these days", says Koivu of his time since his illness.
     
Anyone who saw his work-rate in the opening World Cup of Hockey match against the Czech Republic last week might wish to take issue with that last statement, as he was all over the ice, throwing in big tackles on the likes of Marek Malik and Jiri Fischer, both of whom are a good 20 cms bigger than the Finnish captain. The burly Czech backs never had a moment’s peace to build their game.
      After Koivu’s successful début season in the NHL in 1995-96 (he ranked 4th in scoring among the rookies), the next five years went astray through a variety of injuries. Ironically, he went on to be one of only three players on the team to play in all 82 matches of the regular season in 2002-2003, immediately after his go-round with cancer. It was an almost superhuman feat, and it did not go unnoticed.
     
For the last three or four years, Koivu has concentrated in his training regimens on muscle balance and mobility, and he has increased the amount of stretching he does. There is now less of the pumping iron in the weights room in his programmes.
      "The stretching may be part of the reason I’ve been less prone to injuries of late", he adds.
     
Note: After the Finnish Lions' somewhat laboured quarter-final win over Germany on Monday night, Saku Koivu  will be flying today with the other members of the team to face either the USA or Russia in the semi-finals of the World Cup of Hockey. The semi-final game will be played on Friday in St. Paul, Minnesota.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.9.2004

More on this subject:
 WHO? Saku Koivu

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland make heavy weather of securing World Cup of Hockey progress (7.9.2004)
  Saku Koivu scores game winner for Montreal in NHL playoffs (25.4.2002)
  Applause of home crowd brings tears to Saku Koivu (11.4.2002)
  Saku Koivu illness shocks hockey fraternity (7.9.2001)

Links:
  World Cup of Hockey 2004

HEIKKI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
heikki.miettinen@hs.fi