Finnish legend Jari Kurri played one season in the Olympic city.
– Why Milan? Coach of the Edmonton Oilers John Muckler improved in an interview with a local newspaper, when the club’s superstar Jari Kurri’s new address was confirmed in the summer of 1990.
It was a shock. The entire Kiekkomaailma was running through the same question as Muckler.
At that time, 30-year-old Kurri had just won the fifth Stanley Cup of his career with the Oilers, but the situation had reached a dead end at the negotiating table because he wanted to follow his former chain friend Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings.
When the Oilers did not agree to the trade, Kurri made a radical decision and put his name on the Milan Devils’ offer.
To this day, he no longer remembers where the pattern originally started.
The logic, however, served as a kind of carrot, that by playing in Europe, you would be able to put on the lion jersey in the home games in the spring of 1991.
– Lugano was another option, and Mats Näslund went there Then I was left with that Milan card, Kurri smiles to Iltalehte.
What the heck?
The Kiekkokäpiö league got its toughest player ever, a Finn who scored almost 500 goals in the NHL.
The Devils players couldn’t believe their eyes when the super acquisition finally landed in Milan.
– The Milan group had a few surprises when they saw me at the training camp. Quite a lot was asked that what the heck, what are you doing here? Kurri remembers.
In terms of ice hockey, it was easy to adapt because the team’s coaching and players were made up of Canadians.
Kurri scored 75 points in 30 games, but it was not carefree playing. The Canadian blood that flowed in the veins of many players made sure that there was reason to blink over the shoulder.
Enthusiastic about the tackles and fights, the tifosi made the Devils’ barn, which absorbed four thousand souls, an atmospheric place.
– The Italian audience is quite a lively crowd. After all, it was its own kind of experience, Kurri says with an example.
– You had to be careful when you went to the changing room. It had small Plexiglas on the back, which they beat. If you rested your head on it, you lost consciousness.
Kurri was impressed by a visit to the league’s throwback Cortina, who played their home match in a starlit sky.
The season, which was shaped at a moderate pace of one game per week, offered, in addition to experiences, a kind of breathing time after long NHL seasons.
At the Milan stop, Kurri had time to take care of his body.
– After all, you came there to apply for more years in your career. That’s how I thought about it afterwards, he states.
Berlusconi had had enough
Silvio Berlusconi owned the Milan Devils. PDO
Kurri joined the club, which had been founded only a year earlier. Milano Devils was backed by money, because it was run Silvio Berlusconi owned by Fininvest company.
The Italian businessman came from the NHL takeover of his once admired team.
– Then, in the first round, there was a little mess with the blade of the skate. I took it [terän] for maintenance and I sat on the bench waiting for it. Didn’t come back during the entire set, Kurri says.
The prestigious guest left the place already at the 1st set break.
– I guess Berlusconi was a bit surprised where this guy is. Then he couldn’t wait.
In Fininvest’s sports club portfolio, hockey took a back seat. Kurri recalls that at that time in Milan, the football and volleyball teams owned by Berlusconi and boasting world stars were the most talked about.
The legend of the Devils ended already in 1997.
A dramatic call
The USA attacked Kuwait when Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw his troops from the country. PDO
Outside of ice hockey, the season was a little different for the Kurr family than they had thought about in advance.
Plans changed on January 17, 1991.
– In the morning I got a call that “no school today, the war has started”. That’s when the heart jumped a little, a pretty tough message came, Kurri goes back 35 years ago, when the news about the US operation Desert Storm in Kuwait reached him.
The hockey player’s twin sons attended an international school that closed its doors for security reasons when the Persian Gulf War began.
After that, Kurri made a decision with his wife at the time that the rest of the family would go back to Finland for the rest of the season.
Kurri didn’t really learn the Italian language, although he enjoyed himself in the company of not only Canadian passport holders but also local players.
– Italians like to sit and eat and pull pasta. Yes, those days went by then. Of course, I trained a little extra when my training was over.
Back to the grind
Kurri had not played in the center forward position before the 1991–92 season with the Kings. IL ARCHIVE
The work done on his own time paid off when Kurri finally got what he wanted and was able to move from the Oilers to the Kings organization for the 1991–92 season.
The defection from Italy to the bucks was huge.
– It wasn’t an easy year. You had to collect yourself a bit and find your own level. Yes, it came from there little by little, he adds up to 60 power points in his season that produced in the regular season.
The return to the NHL can be considered a success against the background that Kurri had to find new dimensions to his game in a new place.
– Of course, the role also changed. I didn’t always play with Gretzky in Los. When he was injured, I played center. We got it To Luc Robitaille together with a really good chain.
There is credit
The ice hockey world will set its sights on Milan on February 11, when the Olympic ice hockey tournament begins.
Kurri will not go to his former hometown, but plans to follow the world’s best players closely from his home couch. In addition to lions as well Jukka Jalonen the excerpts from the coached Italy are interesting.
Of course, getting the games started still requires that the badly unfinished Olympic shrine Santa Giulia be completed.
The puck man, who followed the organization of the Torino 2006 games as part of the International Olympic Committee’s athlete commission, is not surprised by the situation.
– Don’t Italians always say domani, domani, tomorrow, tomorrow, Kurri laughs.
– I have a little experience with it, but yes, one way or another they rush things to the end.
