“A positive thing” – Artturi Lehkonen’s drive to win Stanley Cup Final made his father proud as coach and dad
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Artturi Lehkonen
Colorado Avalanche forward Artturi Lehkonen successfully scored a goal for the Colorado Avalanche in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals in a 4-3 victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday, at Ball Arena. His father Ismo Lehkonen watched his son score the goal. He is a proud hockey dad on many levels. He watched Artturi represent the newest generation of players, as the 60-year-old coach and mentor covered the Final for the YLE television network from Finland.
Ismo said, “Almost every Finnish boy’s dream is to win the title, win the Stanley Cup, same as Canadian player”. “Finland is the same. Now everybody’s starting to dream about winning the Stanley Cup. It wasn’t like that 20 years ago. Everybody then was dreaming about wearing Finnish national team shirts and winning the world championship title. But now everybody starts to dream about this holy grail, this trophy.”
Artturi Lehkonen makes his father proud
The Colorado Avalanche is halfway there following a 7-0 win in Game 2 at Ball Arena on Saturday. Game 3 of the best-of-7 series will be held at Tampa Bay on Monday. Artturi Lehkonen’s father Ismo said, “That’s a long road”. “I promised to Artturi that if he would make a professional career, and when it started to look like he would play in the NHL, I would stop coaching [teams].”
As noted on nhl.com, Ismo further said that his son Artturi is at a point in his career where “it didn’t matter. All that matters is the team winning.” “I’m an old-school coach; no mercy,” he said. “Because when he told me when he was 12 that he told me he wanted to play in the NHL, I questioned him about that almost eight years. When he joined the Swedish [Hockey League] team, started to play for Frolunda [in 2014-15], then I stopped doing that.”
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Artturi on the other hand noted after his Game 1 scoring that now he knows why his dad is such a great coach, “He’s pretty demanding in a work ethic way”. He continued, “There are pluses and minuses to it, for sure,” Artturi said. “He was pushing us hard growing up, but when you look back at it, of course, it was probably a positive thing, for sure, overall.”
Artturi Lehkonen recorded 9 points in 16 games with 6 goals and 3 assists for the Colorado Avalanche after his trade and has 12 points in 16 Stanley Cup Playoff games with 7 goals and 5 assists, including the series-ending overtime goal in Game 4 against the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final on June 6.
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Kaushani Chatterjee
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