Kalervo Kummola comments on the planned new hockey league.
– If reforms are constantly stalled, at some point it will escalate.
This is how Kalervo Kummola sums up the news from the beginning of the week about the planned new hockey league.
– Yes, some kind of agreement and consensus should be found on that – or if there is no agreement, then an agreement that Finnish hockey cannot stand big disputes at the moment, he reflects.
– I hope we can find a common line now.
Kalervo Kummola was the CEO of the SM League in 1975–85 and the vice president and chairman of the Ice Hockey Association in 1990–2016. Pasi Liesimaa
Kummola criticized the SM league’s limited company model and especially the shareholder agreement system.
– This type of shareholder agreement does not really belong in Finnish society, at least not in an open society. Hopefully we can at least get rid of it this season.
“The schedule seems pretty tight”
Kummola stresses that it is important for the Ice Hockey Federation to be involved in the whole, if only because of the player transfer kinks.
– That’s what I emphasized to everyone, that the blessing of the union must be included – and they understand that.
Were you aware that such a new league pattern was developing in the background?
– I was a bit confused, but not about the details.
Do you think it’s realistic that the new league could be operational already next fall?
– The schedule seems quite tight, because, for example, the old TV contract is now valid.
Appears as the face of the new league Heikki Penttiläformer chairman of Tappara. According to him, the new league could be ready to start as early as next autumn.
Backwoods men
Strong winds of change are blowing in the SM league. MIKA KYLMÄNIEMI / AOP
Kummola was founding the SM league in 1975. This is how he remembered the setting in his book The Iron Chancellor (Otava 2020): “The championship league clubs gradually got tired of the fact that the men of the backwoods exercised power in the Ice Hockey Association, who often controlled the majority of the association’s meetings with the power of attorney from the small clubs.”
Similar shades can be seen in the current situation.
– Back then, of course, there weren’t two competing league-level organizations, but there were pretty tough arguments with the union, Kummola recalls.
– We performed quite loudly and sometimes even walked out of union meetings. In the end, the union took the spoon in hand.
The first SM league season started in the fall of 1975. According to Kummola, “stupid decisions” had been made in the previous season.
– The last season of the championship series had been quite flat. Two good teams, SaiPa and TuTo, were eliminated from there, and replaced by two relatively weak teams, Forssa [FoPS] and Vaasa [Sport]Kummola elaborates.
– In that respect, the beginning was a bit of an old-fashioned trick.
Was it clear at the founding stage that you will be relegated from the new SM league and promoted there?
– It was, it was.
At the end of the first season, FoPS and Sport played a qualifying series, in which Kiekkoreipas and Kärpät made it out of the first team. FoPS kept its place, and Kiekkoreipas cleared the increase after beating Kärpät in the rematch.