Jokerit boss Harkimo embarrassed by his team’s lacklustre performance

print this

Helsinki-based Jokerit pro ice hockey team owned by businessman Harry "Hjallis" Harkimo has now spent seven consecutive years in the Finnish premier league SM-Liiga without winning the championship.
     
”I’ve been ashamed to attend home games”, admits the Jokerit boss at a corner table of a Helsinki restaurant.
     “During the ended season our team was unruly and spiritless doing whatever it wanted, playing as it pleased. We were defeated by bad teams, yet we beat some good ones.”
     According to Harkimo, one of the Jokerit employees had summarised the sentiments by stating that “fun has disappeared from being with the team”.
     
”The good spirit and atmosphere of the 1990s has to be breathed back into the team. It is time we returned to square one, the family business model”, Harkimo says.
     In Harkimo’s view, Jokerit has broken further and further away from the road of caring with each successive year.
     “We are not doing well. Ice hockey is a sport where everything starts from the feeling. It is not enough to get the team together before the start of the season and then wait for the championship with arms akimbo.”
     Harkimo sighs: “I’m ashamed. I cannot throw my hat in the air. A lot of mistakes have been made. The choosing of coaches and players did not work out as planned.”
     
Harkimo is not looking for a whipping-boy. He refrains from specifying what might have been the single greatest flaw with the operation of the team.
     “The whole package has been weak. For that I can only blame myself.”
     Harkimo admits that during the season that just ended his team’s performance on ice was not very audience-engaging.
     
Jokerit yearns for success, but this cannot be by any means whatsoever.
     “Ultimately ice hockey is - and it has to be - entertainment. Coaches and players have to be chosen accordingly”, Harkimo emphasises.
     
Harkimo has adopted the role of an onlooker.
     But he believes that a change is coming - a return to what once was.
     “The owners have to come into the picture more strongly. They have to be more committed, and by that I don’t mean that they should meddle with everything”, Harkimo ponders.
     “With Jokerit the atmosphere has to improve. We have to be open. We have to increase social interaction, get to know our co-workers and their families.”


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Money-drenched Russian hockey league seen as a threat to domestic competition (22.10.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat