Lukko Rauma enter their Champions Hockey League Semi-Final as underdogs against Finnish champs Karpat Oulu, but hometown hero Toni Koivisto believes his team can win if they stick to their game.
by Derek O'Brien
Of the four teams remaining in this season’s Champions Hockey League, Lukko Rauma may be the most anonymous. They don’t have a lot of internationally-known players, but they do have a hard-working team that sticks to head coach Risto Dufva’s system.
“We've got a pretty solid D and a really good goalie,” winger Toni Koivisto said about the team’s corps of defenceman and its American goaltender Ryan Zapolski. “We always try to make sure we take care of our defensive responsibilities first, and then worry about scoring goals.”
When it comes to scoring goals, 33-year-old Koivisto is one of the players that the team turns to. He leads the team with 29 points in 35 Liiga games, and also 11 points in 10 CHL contests to earn him the Cramo Top Scorer jersey.
“I try to be a leader. You know, I'm one of the older guys on the team now, and this is my hometown team, so I'm really proud to be there and I try to be one of the key guys.”
Koivisto was actually born in Ylitornio in the far north of Finland. Had he stayed there, he probably would have grown up a fan of Karpat Oulu, the team Lukko is facing in the upcoming CHL Semi-Finals. But he grew up in Rauma, a town of 40,000 inhabitants on Finland's southwest coast, and eventually played for Lukko, the local team.
He rose through the ranks and eventually played in Liiga, Finland's top league, first with Lukko, then Ilves Tampere and, in 2008–09, Karpat, where he played in the first edition of the Champions Hockey League. Then he went abroad and played in Russia for Metallurg Magnitogorsk and in Sweden for Frolunda Gothenburg and Lulea Hockey. Finally he returned home to Rauma in 2013, where, at age 31, he found himself one of the veterans on the team.
“I was away five years but now I'm back,” he says. While playing abroad was a valuable experience, there’s nothing quite like playing for your hometown team. There can be pressure, though, when you’re a big fish in a small pond.
“It's a different kind of pressure than, say, in Russia, where it's more from the management and the coaches,” Koivisto explained. “When you play in your hometown, you always want to play well for your fans, because you know a lot of them personally.”
Since his return, Lukko – who haven’t won a national title since 1963 – have been to the Liiga semi-finals every year. Koivisto would like to see them take the next step.
“We've been a top-four team the last three years but we haven't been to the finals yet. This year it would be really nice to go to the finals and win something.”
Of course, Lukko are among the final four teams in the CHL. Standing in their way, however, is a Karpat team that has dominated Finnish hockey over the last few years.
“Well, it's a good challenge,” he said of the task ahead. “We've had a chance to see different styles of hockey from all around Europe and now we're in a position where we can think about winning the Champions Hockey League. We play against Karpat and the winner of that goes to the Final. We know each other pretty well from playing in the Finnish league.”
So far this season Karpat have taken eight out of nine points from Lukko, but the games have been close and Koivisto knows that the team from the north can be beaten.
“They’re good, but there’s not so much difference between the level of the teams in Finland – you start every game feeling that you can win. If we play our game, we believe we can beat anybody.”
That formula has been successful for Lukko so far in the Champions Hockey League.