Saku Koivu
Saku Koivu
Saku Antero Koivuis a Finnish former professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League. He began his NHL career with the Montreal Canadiens in 1995–96 after three seasons with TPS of the Finnish SM-liiga. Koivu served as the Canadiens' captain for ten of his 14 years with the club, which makes him the longest captaincy tenure in team history, tied with Jean Béliveau. Koivu was the first European player to captain the Montreal Canadiens...
NationalityFinnish
ProfessionHockey Player
Date of Birth23 November 1974
CityTurku, Finland
CountryFinland
I think for Finns, it's probably, maybe, the biggest game ever. Not just that we're playing in the gold-medal game in the Olympics, but we all know the importance of playing against Sweden.
There are a lot of good things going on here. We're not getting away from our game plan, and we're getting the bounces and the breaks.
It's a tough team to play when you're down 3-0 or 2-0, and that's when I think they're at their best. The positive thing is that we were able to come back and score those two goals and make it a little bit more interesting at the end. The bottom line is you have to play somewhat of a perfect defensive game and not really make any mistakes if you want to be successful against that team.
They're all really important games right now. We need points to secure a playoff spot, and that's what we're looking for right now.
It's been tough for me being away from the game.
I think the positive is that everything is in our hands. I know we've played well for the last 15 or 20 games, but we need to win that last game and secure a spot.
I thought Perezhogin played really strong, he scored his second goal, he's been a real surprise. We knew he had offensive talent but the way he worked for the puck in the corners was impressive.
It goes way, way back when we were under Sweden's rule. We always think they are better than us. We played against them so often for so many years. Every country has one opponent they want to beat and for us, it's Sweden.
I think there's a lot of reasons. A lot of times in the regular season, you play back-to-back nights or you're on the road for a long time. In the playoffs, everyone is focused and . . . sometimes there's no explanation for things.
I was lucky that it hit my shaft, and then my helmet, and I was lucky enough to get that breakaway.
When you have a core group of young players as we do, the future looks bright.
You know it's going to be a great atmosphere, the fans are going to be really crazy, there's no doubt about that. Hopefully we can get that energy there that we need, but sometimes there's a chance that you want to do too much so I think we've got to still realize there's a long way to go and what we're doing right now well, to keep doing those things and then just go and fight for a win.
We just didn't show up in the first period,
We can't afford to go lose two, three in a row. We've got to keep climbing and getting wins.