ICE HOCKEY: Mika's no mouse! Tough defenceman typifies the Finnish approach

WITH a thick file tucked under his thick arm and a 'ready to get things done' expression on his face, Mika Pynnonen looks more like a businessman than defenceman for Lancashire Hawks.

This initial impression as we sit down in the Blackburn Arena restaurant is not wide of the mark.

Committed though he is to playing ice hockey for another three, four years - after initially contemplating retirement at the end of last season - Pynnonen is anxious to secure a part-time job.

To take his mind off the hockey, perhaps?

"No, to make money," is his straightforward explanation.

"It makes your living easier.

"I don't think you have to be rich but you have to get along."

Pynnonen has a degree from his hometown business school in Tampere, Finland, as well as experience in running his own health club, sports shop and a background in marketing.

He is also a graduate from the school of hard knocks, a thin scar through his left eyebrow the most graphic illustration of that.

"I have only 75 per cent vision in the eye after being hit by a puck in practice in Tampere," said Pynnonen, who will be 31 next month - 'but I am still 30 for a few more days'!

"I didn't know for one month if I would be able to see out of the eye again. "Now I don't think about it. For a year maybe I used a face visor but then I stopped.

"Injury is always a threat in hockey but it can happen anywhere."

Belligerence is a statutory requirement for performers in a sport that features legal, bare-knuckle fistfighting and 15 stone-plus men skating at speeds of up to 30mph in confined areas.

The fighting can appear comical for it is tough to throw coordinated hooks and uppercuts on the ice without slipping onto your backside.

But it is an integral part of the game and it is for real.

Former National Hockey League president John Zeigler views it as "the spontaneous combat that comes out of the frustrations of the game".

Maybe people are attracted to the sport because of this - and everything else from the Gary Glitter music (Come on, come on) to the pom-pom girls to the guy chugging around at half-time on his tractor to smooth the ice.

Ice hockey is razzmatazz, fun to play and fun to watch.

Some referees even believe the fighting has a restorative effect.

"Fights take the tension out, the bubble is burst, they get it out of their system and they get on with the game," said Alan Batchelder, a writer for Ice Hockey News and one of the country's leading referees.

"They generally don't use their sticks which is just as well because a lot of them now have aluminium shafts.

"But anyway, fists don't really break your bones." Batchelder must have been Joe Louis's sparring partner in a former life. But it is true that in this game the indecisive and the fearful cannot survive.

"The last fight I had was seven years ago - I didn't have to fight after that," said Pynnonen with the air of a man who has fulfilled the fighters' basic rule: Never, ever lose.

But though he is hard, Pynnonen is not a goon (the term used in the United States and Canada for persistent combatants).

"I just like to play. I'm not that anxious to fight," he said.

"Every game is different and perhaps there is a history of trouble between some teams.

"But it's not a big deal.

"However, I never like to see players use sticks.

"This can injure another player's face or hands and I don't like that."

That is not the way his father, Pentti - who managed the local hockey factory and played for Ilves before Mika - brought his son up to play the game.

One of Pynnonen's earliest memories is of his first hockey game, as a seven-year-old. "In the first or second shift I scored in my own goal - it was embarrassing and I have never forgotten it," he smiled.

He took his hockey seriously despite this unfortunate baptism but mother Ulla, who ran a restaurant, impressed on him to take his schoolwork seriously too, which he did. The work ethic he developed then would serve him well in business later.

At 17, he went to Montreal to pursue his hockey career.

"It was a big thing for a 17-year-old, suddenly having to take care of yourself in a foreign country," reflected Pynnonen. "And it was a culture shock on the rink as well. There (in Canada), junior teams are like professional teams, having 80 games a season.

"It involved a lot of travelling, the longest journey taking 14 hours!

"I think I spent the whole year on a bus!"

The subsequent years have been spent playing at the top level in Finland as well as raising three children, Ville, 12, Joel, eight, and Olivia, four, which has been made more problematic by separation from his wife.

"I love my children and it was difficult, for example, to take the step to come to England without them," said Pynnonen.

"They stay with their mother at home and I had to talk to her about the move. "She knows that if I am not playing ice hockey I am like an ill cat.

"So when the offer came from England, after I had contemplated retiring, we had no big argument over that!

"But I miss the kids. Hopefully, I can take the two older ones here for a week in October."

It gave Mika great pleasure over the summer when his children were with him for two months in the tiny cottage he owns about half an hour from Tampere, where he can get away from everything.

"It is my retreat and as I get older I think it is more important for me to spend time there," he said.

"It stops me feeling older, I think!"

Hawks coach Jim Pennycook does not consider Pynnonen too old to do a job for the Blackburn team.

"Mika is important to the team - in fact, I think the quality of our imports is better this year than last," declared the tough Scot, about whom predecessor Ryan Kummu said 'he's a great guy who will give people a nip in the pants when they need it'.

Pynnonen can impart a little motivation too.

"I think the team can play good and I can develop too," he concluded.

"Every game is for winning. I don't like to lose."

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