Pakarinen familiar with every angle of Finland, Sweden rivalry ahead of 4 Nations meeting

Risto Pakarinen grew up in Finland but has lived in Sweden for the past 25 years, settling down and starting a family.

The columnist for NHL.com/sv and NHL.com/fi knows the rivalry between the noisy neighbors as well as anyone.

He’s lived both sides of it and has written about it for several publications, including ESPN.com, IIHF.com and The Hockey News. One of the several books he has written is on Alpo Suhonen, the legendary Finnish coach, and another is on the 1995 Finnish national team, which won the first World Championship in the nation’s history.

Here is his take on what is at stake and what it all means when Finland and Sweden renew their rivalry at the 4 Nations Face-Off at Bell Centre on Saturday (1 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS).

Ken Dryden, the Hall of Famer, Canadiens legend, and author, wrote in “The Game” that “the golden age of anything is the age of everyone’s childhood.”

I was comfortably out of my teens before Finland ever was a contender in international tournaments. In my childhood, getting relegated from the top division was a more likely outcome than a medal. To win the whole thing? Not in the cards.

In other words, it wasn’t easy for me to find homegrown heroes in what was my golden age of Finnish hockey. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think you’ll ever find a better passer than Matti Hagman or a more creative winger than Hannu Kapanen. But to me they were Helsinki IFK stars first and Team Finland stars second, even if Kapanen’s disallowed goal would’ve clinched Finland’s first Olympic medal in 1976.

With Team Finland finishing between fifth and seventh in the Worlds, and sixth in the Canada Cups – if invited to the six-team tournament – I had to look elsewhere for medal-winning role models.

To the East, there was the mighty Soviet Union and its flashy, speedy, skilled forwards, such as Valeri Kharlamov.

To the West, there was Sweden, the monarchy that used to rule all the land we now call Finland, its citizens speaking the language that is still the second official language of Finland, to the chagrin of Finnish-speaking teenagers who must take it at school.

Sweden was the first overseas tourist destination for many, if not most, Finns and Sweden was the Finnish artists’ first foreign market as they tried to follow in ABBA’s footsteps. The Sweden of Volvo and Saab was also home to about 200,000 Finns who moved there in the 1960s to build those cars.

Sweden had Ingrid Bergman, Ingmar Bergman, IKEA, Absolut, Europe, Roxette, Britt Ekland, and Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), and Team Sweden –Tre Kronor – who succeeded in something that eluded the Finnish “Lions.”

They won medals in international tournaments.

Unsurprisingly then, when I sat down at my desk after school in Helsinki to write imaginary play-by-plays in a journal, the Finns were already out of the picture when I got to the key games. Even my imagination had its limits.

Whatever Kapanen or Hagman or Petri Skriko couldn’t quite do, Mats Naslund, Hakan Loob or Kent Nilsson could.

They went head-to-head against the Soviets page after page after page, only to lose the gold-medal game. Like I said, my imagination did have its limits.

The '80s, while otherwise a marvelous decade, were tough on Finland. In 1983, a win against Italy kept the Finns from being relegated, but they did play a 4-4 tie against Sweden.

In 1986, the Lions made it to the medal round and with 41 seconds remaining against Sweden, they held a comfortable 4-2 lead. Unfortunately, with 31 seconds remaining, the game was tied.

Hello, national trauma.

At the end of the tournament, one point separated Sweden and Finland. Sweden took bronze, Finland finished fourth. The Finnish coach was in tears.

A year later in Austria, the Finnish federation filed a protest when they uncovered that a Polish-born player of the West German team had represented Poland at the inaugural World Juniors a decade prior. The IIHF ruled for Finland and overturned the German wins against Finland and Canada. West Germany took the case to the Vienna District Court and won – thanks to a waiver signed by the IIHF Secretary General, a Swede.

Finland’s berth in the medal round went to Sweden and it, of course, went on to win the World Championship for the first time in 25 years.

In Finland, “Vienna District Court” became synonymous with “kangaroo court.”

The big brother/little brother rivalry only works if both parties are in on it.

Finland certainly always stepped up in their games against Sweden, wanting to win at any and all costs – often it was the only game they showed up for – because it mattered to them, but the Swedes dreamed of downing the giants, Canada or the Soviet Union.

Between 1920 and 1988, the score in the Olympic and Worlds medal race between Sweden and Finland was 27-0.

But the tide did turn.

Since 1995, Finland’s first World Championship, the medal count is tied at 19 each.

The first gold medal sent the country into a frenzy.

I watched the final with a Finnish friend of mine who had lived most of his life in Sweden, and as the clock ticked down toward Finland’s 4-1 victory, he lamented, “The Finns probably won’t even know how to celebrate this.”

He hadn’t even reached the end of the sentence when we heard the first cars driving by my Helsinki apartment, horns ablaze, the cars wrapped in Finnish flags. The next day, still oblivious to how important the championship was to my countrymen, I rollerbladed to downtown Helsinki to have a look at the parade. I was completely unprepared for the crowds as I stood at the corner of the Market Square and the Northern Esplanade, surrounded by 100,000 Finns, unable to move, let alone rollerblade.

A friend of mine almost got his shoulder pulled out of its socket high-fiving a player sitting in the back of a convertible in the parade. Worth it.

I moved to Sweden in April 1998. Less than fifty days later, I was one of 35,000 people at the Sergel Plaza, welcoming Sundin, Peter Forsberg, and Mikael Renberg home as world champions. Again.

My new Swedish colleagues showed great, albeit unnecessary, empathy toward me, telling me that the final had been really close, and that Finland could’ve won it, too.

Nothing worse than a gracious winner.

In 2003, when Tre Kronor rallied back from 5-1 to oust the Finns in a Worlds quarterfinal, my Swedish brother-in-law pulled up his jacket zipper to hide his yellow Sweden shirt, so he wouldn’t draw the attention of a group of bikers sitting next to us. His concerns were unfounded, it turned out. As we walked out after the game, all three biker guys shook his hand and congratulated him on the win.

I was also in the crowd in February 2006 when Sundin brought the team to Stockholm to meet the fans after the Olympic gold, and again later that year after they won the Worlds.

I was in Bratislava when Finland won its second World Championship, beating Sweden in the final, and I was in the press box in 2013 when the Sedins came home to lead Sweden to a Worlds gold.

I was in downtown Stockholm for the 2017 and 2018 parades as well. Never again on rollerblades, though.

Granted, having covered games at the Worlds and the Olympics and World Cups, my heart doesn’t beat quite as fast for any of the teams anymore. Also, my quarter of a century in Sweden has certainly left its mark on me.

I’ve seen an entire generation of Swedish players go from World Juniors to retirement, and I’ve got to meet my old heroes, both Finnish and Swedish – Naslund, Ketola, Sundin, Skriko, Loob – and not once have I been disappointed.

However, there is one player who still makes me truly cheer for the Lions.

Or Lionesses.

Two years ago, my daughter was invited to the Finland women’s U-18 camp. We took the ferry and drove up to their training facility where I left her to get acquainted with the other girls.

I snuck up to the stands to watch her practice, and seeing her on the ice in that blue sweater with the Finnish lion made my chest swell with pride and my heart race like I was doing laps in the rink myself.

Naturally, my allegiances would change swiftly, if Sweden came knocking.