Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\nWhich brings us to Atro Leppanen, the latest Finnish training camp sensation in Edmonton, who was somehow guided here through Finnish \u201cintuition.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey reached out in the spring, and there was one other (NHL) team,\u201d Leppanen said this week. \u201cI kind of made an intuition choice \u2014 it was pretty easy choice to come here. Nice place, and good players.\u201d<\/p>\n
To understand this 26-year-old defenceman\u2019s journey is not only to study his climb through the hockey ranks \u2014 from the Finnish beer leagues where he was pumping gas to supplement his income only a few seasons ago, to setting the defenceman scoring record in the top-tier Liiga and playing more international games than any of his countrymen last season.<\/p>\n
He comes from tiny Mantta, a failing factory town of less than 10,000 that ironically gave us Siltanen as well. There, in Finland\u2019s Flint, life led to the factories, where both of Leppanen\u2019s parents worked.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve repurposed a couple of moribund factories into museums in Mantta, and as a summer job, \u201cI was watching the paintings,\u201d Leppanen said. \u201cNobody touches the paintings. That was my job.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Leppanen could stay in security, or find a job at the local paper mill that basically ran the town, and play for the local side in the only indoor arena in Mantta. Or he could try his hand at the second division in a nearby town, on a team coached by Tomas Westerlund.<\/p>\n
\u201cAtro called me,\u201d began Wetsterlund, over the phone from Keuruu, Finland. \u201cHe was playing some beer league in the next village (Mantta). He asked if he could come for a tryout, and I was thinking, \u2018Why not? We don\u2019t have any hometown boys on the team. It might bring some people to watch games, a hometown boy coming to play.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Leppanen arrived at second division KeuPa and played off and on as a winger, before Westerlund installed him full-time on defence. There, he began to rewrite the record books in the Mestis, Finland\u2019s second-best league. Then he did the same in the Liiga.<\/p>\n
It is a remarkable ascent for a smaller \u2014 six-foot, 182 pounds \u2014 defenceman in his mid- to late-20s. He couldn\u2019t possibly continue it in North America, with his 27th birthday due on Dec. 14, through Bakersfield and into the National Hockey League?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a really late bloomer,\u201d smiled Westerlund. \u201cI\u2019ve been coaching for many years, and nothing surprises me anymore. He made all the points records in the second league, and in two years he broke all the records in the Finnish top league. He\u2019s been adapting pretty fast to new leagues and new teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Atro\u2019s case, he\u2019s been coming in five years from the beer league to the top league (NHL). It\u2019s quite fast. Most players have been in loop, in the best leagues already, but Atro has had a different road. He\u2019s from a small town, and not from a rich family. He has had to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis father passed away when Atro was maybe 15. His jersey hangs in Mantta\u2019s roof (rafters).\u201d<\/p>\n
Leppanen has stood out at camp in Edmonton, running the power play in early games when the veterans have not played. He appears as a bit of a Brian Rafalski clone, or maybe Matt Grzelcyk, who has played over 500 NHL games at five-foot-10 and 180 lbs.<\/p>\n
He is today\u2019s defenceman: quick, skilled and adept at the zone exit that has become favorable to the ability to defend, in many circles. Here in Edmonton, whoever can furnish the big boys with crisp accurate passes gets a second look.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s what they want,\u201d head coach Kris Knoblauch said of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. \u201cThey want to get the puck in stride and not have to chase it down and forecheck, so they can do their thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost certainly, barring injury to a regular, Leppanen will go to AHL Bakersfield, where he will try to conquer another level. There, NHL scouts will convene, and if his game grades out at an NHL level, either the Oilers will sign him or another team will.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a journey, to be sure. But hey, it beats factory work.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying ice hockey, getting paid for it,\u201d Leppanen smiles. \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 The same way Vancouver has always welcomed Swedish players \u2014 from Gradin to Sedin, from Edler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-169084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n