Risto Dufva tells a special reason for his decision: “Readers can think about that”

Vaasan Sport piloted by Dufva will fight for the last playoff spots in the SM League until next Tuesday’s final round. That’s when it will be decided whether his head coaching career will continue into the spring or whether it will end there.

Dufva answered Iltalehti’s battery of questions.

You started your coaching career in 1991 at JyP HT as a goalkeeper and assistant coach. Your first head coaching job was in SaPKo’s 1st division team in 1994–95. With your current experience, what advice would you give to your then self?

– When starting new tasks, the most important resource is the iron confidence given by complete ignorance. It is comforting in life and applies to this and everything else.

How do you rate your development as a coach since those days?

– If you have been allowed to do this for so long and you haven’t come to any conclusions about what you and others have done, it would be a miracle.

– I hope that I have been able to separate the irrelevant from the essential better and better. After all, he has also learned here that it is essential to separate dilettantes from professionals.

Would you not do something with such hindsight – or would you do it differently?

– I guess that’s how life always goes, that in retrospect, not all solutions are quite right. But in that moment, with that snapshot, with that wisdom and that feeling, those things have been done. The end result is always someone, and I’ve been able to live with that.

In the job of a responsibility coach, pressure comes as a natural advantage. How have you learned to deal with them?

– As a coach, you should try to relieve the pressure of others. That’s probably the big thing that I’ve improved on. I don’t collect that kind of pressure anymore, because it doesn’t help those athletes.

– However, here the coaches are helping the athletes to perform well in sports. There is no benefit in transferring the coach’s own pressure to the players.

Which values ​​have been at the center of your work?

– Yes, he has tried to display these traditional values ​​related to honesty here on a daily basis.

– When a large entity is managed here, the authors always have their own perspectives on things. It must be understood that the world can look a little different from a different angle.

– In these last weeks, when I have been reminded by different parties, I do have the feeling that I have reasonably managed to be what I have said I am.

How has hockey developed during your career?

– From semi-professionalism to full professionalism. That’s what I got to be involved in here. When I started, a large part of the league players still went to work, so to speak, at least partially.

What would you like to change in Finnish ice hockey?

– All participants should think more about the whole. For this to go well, we all need to be involved. We should take care of such processes so that we can form a common vision of all parties about what we want to be and where we want to be on our way.

– This is a bit of a different camp, although everything is needed here. Players are needed here, referees are needed, coaches and guardians are needed. Well-being clubs are needed. Then when the product is like that, we can offer it to those who want to consume hockey entertainment.

– Fix the processes. There is certainly enough wisdom in the people who make the decisions, but somehow the discussion around the sport is quite divisive.

What thing would you like to change in the Finnish hockey discussion?

– It is a consequence of the aforementioned. It’s good that there is a discussion – it shows interest – but you should always put things in perspective.

– It’s worth thinking about what we’re really doing here. This applies to sports, not just hockey.

Flying sentences

For your part, you have at least brought puck into the discussion dufisms, which are built on distinctive philosophizing and laconic humor. For example: “When it’s hard, it’s not easy”, “You don’t have to be good, it’s enough to be the best of those present” and last Thursday in Rauma “We need every point, and even a comma will do”.

What can be found in the background of countless platitudes and puns?

– Such a one-man rebellion. You have to understand what we are producing. This is entertainment, and I think it’s always forgotten sometimes. I have deliberately tried to provoke a little in that direction. Sometimes I have succeeded better and sometimes a little less.

– I don’t really think about them, or I don’t think at all beforehand. In that moment, what comes will come. Sometimes a good thing happens and quite a lot of times a bad thing happens.

You piloted JYP to the first Finnish championship in the club’s history in the spring of 2009. How would that team fare in the playoffs starting next week?

– With that soul, any team can do well. That soul was the thing in it. I mean that honesty within the group. The good things I’ve been to have always been accompanied by exceptional soulfulness.

Sport is now fighting for the third playoff spot in the club’s history, with matches against HIFK and Ässi remaining. How do you sum up the season and see the solutions ahead?

– The season is summed up when it’s over. We have been on the edge many times here and have fallen many times, but we have been really persistent this year. I hope we’ll be there until the end. How to say it: It’s not over until the fat lady sings.

Playoff income would be important for the financially strapped club. What kind of success does the team dream of?

– We dreamed of the Finnish championship.

What if you don’t get a playoff spot and your career ends on Tuesday like a wall – how shockingly disappointing would that be?

– If you try something here and you don’t get it, you have to get to know the normal everyday life of sports. It’s normal not to get what you want. That’s what sport is based on.

– Then conclusions and analyzes are made and we each continue forward in our own way. This is how it goes.

You are in second place in the league’s head coaches’ match statistics (938), ahead of only Jukka Rautakorpi (974). “One more year”, and you would have reached 1000. Why did you decide to quit anyway?

– The wife ordered.

Was this an exaggeration or a fact?

– Haha, readers can think about that.

Farewell tour

As the spring progresses, you’ve been on a farewell tour, as it were, when you’ve arrived for the last time as a league coach in different locations. For example, JYP remembered you with a stetson, and when you missed a six-shooter, you also got a teddy bear gun from your previous club Luko.

What thoughts has this evoked?

– I have been a bit confused. I like to think that it tells about how I have encountered people. In that, which is most important to me, I think I have succeeded very well.

– Medals come and go, but the people you meet on this journey remain. We live with those memories and people.

Even the opponents’ supporters have given you their approval, and the KooKoo supporters’ association even invited you as an honorary member. What do you think about all this?

– If the fan group of the opposing team wants to invite me as an honorary member, even though I have never worked for that club but on the bullying side, so to speak, then that’s great. There is no place for anger here, even if we are competing. That is, to the right anger.

What are your plans for the future? After all, with this information, the position of sports director would be vacant at JYP.

– Doesn’t concern me. At the moment, in the near future, there is such a purpose that the knees should be operated on. The old goalkeeper has worn his knees so much that his kneecaps are ready.

Is it your intention to continue with hockey?

– Not in the goal.