Photo: Washington Capitals
As most hockey fans know, the tiny nation of Finland, which has a smaller population than the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, regularly supplies the NHL and AHL with quality hockey players. In fact, 21 of 32 NHL teams currently have a Finn on their roster. But one team that hasn’t taken advantage of that Scandinavian country’s hockey talent is the Washington Capitals.
In the entire history of the team, only seven Finns have played an NHL game for Washington, totalling 329 regular season games. Defenseman Timo Blomqvist had the most significant career with the Capitals, playing 223 games in the early 1980s. (Most notable was possibly Esa Tikkanen, but he played just 20 games for the Capitals in the 1997-98 season).
By contrast, Dallas is a team that is clearly “Finnished”. They have five players on their current roster, and have had 23 total, since moving to Dallas in 1993. Part of the reason they’re so Finn heavy is undoubtedly that their Director of European Scouting is native Finn Karri Takko, who was involved in the best trade ever; dealt for Bruce Bell, it was the Takko-Bell trade.
But Dallas’ love affair with Finns goes back to before Takko’s employment. Long time Star Jere Lehtinen seemed to have begun this trend, when he won two Selke trophies, and in recent years they’ve added budding superstars Roope Hintz and Miro Heiskanen.
So are the Caps’ allergic to Finns? As the Stars had a positive experience with Finns, the Caps had a bad one, so perhaps this had something to do with it. The team used a first round pick on Miika Elomo in 1995, who showed up to camp in 1997 noticeably out of shape, and barely able to complete drills. He only played two games for the team during the 1999-2000 season.
Since then, the Caps have drafted two Finns in late rounds, none have played for the team since Oskar Osala in early 2008. The team does have one under contract though, but Henrik Borgstrom has been stuck in Hershey.
This situation may change soon, though. The team did hire Matty Lamberg, who is based in Helsinki, in 2020, as a European Scout. But why the Finnaphobia in the first place? That question is probably unanswerable.
If GM Brian MacLellan, or Assistant GM Ross Mahoney were asked about it, they’d probably give the company line: “There were no Finns ranked at the spot where we were drafting”. But hopefully this situation will be rectified, in short order. There’s a youngster named Aron Kiviharju who is tearing up the senior Liiga as a 16 year old defenseman. If the Caps can get him, then they’ll truly be Finnished.
By Kimberly Brown
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