And it’s time to begin the journey

With Journey I mean our new assignment with Ismo "Ika" Lehkonen to guide Estonian national hockey team during this upcoming season. We are both looking very much forward to help our neighbors and be part of making hockey more popular sport in the country. We do also realize that it is an honor whenever one has been offered a chance to represent a country in an official capacity. With this in our minds we will do the best we can and our goal is to bring Estonia back to Div-1 level at World Championships.

Right now we are collecting all possible information and Ahtikullervo Jögi from Jäähoki Liit is helping us in this task. As the information, game videos of team Estonia and opponents etc becomes available Ika and I will be able to build our plans, playbooks etc.

Right now Jäähoki Liit is working to arrange a minicamp to Tallinn at 29.8. This will be great as it will provide as a chance to get to know a lot of the potential national team players and also run them through some of the systems we are looking to use with the team. Since the team is scattered around hockey playing Europe during the season we also have to make sure we give players the needed training programs and provide them help as needed when they are with their teams. We really need to have players at top shape before the World Championships begin at Tallinn and when players will report to the training camp. Hopefully before that we can have another camp during one of the breaks in the leagues or during the Christmas holidays.

Anyway, we are really looking forward to work with team Estonia and it’s players. Ika and I will be updating this blog every now and then and tell you about the progress with the team and how things are going.

Jukka Ropponen