– This day was expected. It was a great feeling, HIFK’s new top defender Petteri Lindbohm was happy after the team’s victorious home opener.
Petteri Lindbohm celebrates scoring HIFK’s opening goal. Tomi Natri / AOP
- HIFK beat KooKoo 3–0 in their first home match of the league season.
- The home match was only the first in the League for the 29-year-old Lindbohm in the ranks of his parent club.
– This morning I remembered how crazy it was to watch matches on that side of the stand, Petteri Lindbohm said with emotion about the legendary disc saint on Nordenskiöldinkatu.
– It was great to get here to play. It had been a while since I last played here. Maybe go to some hard-hitting match before the U20 World Championships, he recalled.
Hard seas
It is relatively rare for a player to make his parent league debut at the age of 29.
The fact that the player skates for the first time in front of the home crowd of his parent club after already winning World Cup and Olympic gold.
All this came true for Lindbohm, when HIFK defeated KooKoo cleanly 3–0 in their home opener of the league season on Wednesday.
Previously, Lindbohm had already toured other key clubs in the capital region, i.e. Kiekko-Vantaa, Blues and Jokerit, as well as the KHL, NHL, NL and SHL.
– Someone said that I must have gone around those other series at world record speed, he laughed.
Over the years, how much have you had time to think that this – a league game with the Nordis in a HIFK shirt – would be great to experience?
– Yes, it has been thought about from time to time, Lindbohm admitted.
– There have been a few variables along the way, but he has been thinking that it would be great to come back to play here sometime. Now the pieces fell into place.
The net to swing
The match was sold out, meaning there were 8,200 people in the stands.
– The fans make that mood. It’s great to see them liven up and the group wearing fan shirts. It gives us players an extra boost and we want to earn the support of the fans.
Lindbohm blew the audience into a storm of screams in 17:24. The goal was his third in the SM league. The first was born in Ässie’s shirt in the 2013–14 season and the second last Saturday in Rauma.
– There have never been too many of those goals. Jori then said that the team’s best bad hands, Lindbohm sculpted referring to the number one center Jori Lehterän to speeches.
The hit was born with a fiery and precise blue line.
– I received a good pass, and the molar was in a sideways movement. It just happened to hit. Nothing but more witches, all will be taken.
Shortly after Lindbohm’s hit, a returnee Joonas Rask directed HIFK’s second goal, and in the final set Miro Väänänen sealed a three-goal home win.
Not ready
Lindbohm’s transfer from his last season’s club Frölunda to HIFK was announced at the beginning of August.
– Over the course of the summer, it started to become more and more clear that it would be great to come home. In the end games, it was a pretty easy decision, he said.
– I also knew what the team was like and that it had a chance to succeed.
After last season’s fourth place, among other things, it was Lindbohm who was one of those high-quality, even star-category acquisitions that make HIFK the biggest championship favorite in many papers.
However, everyone knows that medals are not awarded on paper.
– The team has a terrible hunger to develop, so that we can get there at the best in the spring, Lindbohm said.
The KooKoo match was a strong display by the people of Helsinki, and the goalkeeper Roope Taponen got a pretty easy clean sheet.
However, Lindbohm was not as enthusiastic about HIFK’s presentation as its supporters.
– At times it was good, and we made the bad moments much shorter than in the two previous matches. It was definitely for the better, he stated.
– But this is not ready yet. Yes, there is still work to be done here.