What a memorable night. It won't be one any one of us forgets for a long time, especially Mikko.
I'm not sure what we can do for an encore in the second game of this series. Maybe Artturi Lehkonen can get a hat trick this time. He's from Finland too, so how cool and emotional would that be?
It was in this game, that's for sure. To hear the crowd singing Mikko's name, I mean, it was just so amazing.
I talked to Mikko about it after the game and he was surprised about it too. He didn't expect it from a Finnish crowd. He said usually Finnish people are a little shy.
I don't know what was driving it but obviously it was an unbelievable performance. Maybe that was it. They just hadn't seen a performance like that yet. That was special.
For the most part, though, it felt similar to playing in North America in a lot of ways. One of the biggest differences I experienced, however, was the mix of fans in the stands. There were fans for both teams cheering. We would score and hear our goal score play. And I'm pretty sure I heard Columbus' goal song when they scored. There wasn't the overwhelming home crowd for one team like is the norm. That's an adjustment.
Other than that, I don't think any of us felt that much out of place. Sure, we're in a different country and had the travel, the time change, all of that. But once the hockey got going, all that other stuff goes away. The biggest thing is getting your body to feel right for the game. We're pros and we do our best to manage that to the best of our ability, so once things get going, everything kind of clicks into gear.
You never want to give up a three-goal lead like we did in this game. That's obvious. But we felt their comeback was due to more what we were doing and not what they were doing. Maybe we weren't defending as hard as we needed to create the offense that we wanted.
I hate talking about last year, but it's true: Our success often came when we would defend well, which would lead to transition and more time in the offensive zone as a result. And once we're in the offensive zone, we're dangerous, right? You can catch opposing players being pretty tired, and we have some pretty skilled guys who can make them pay for that.
That's what we knew we had to get back to. And that's what we have to do in the rematch Saturday.
In the meantime, this was Mikko's night. Again, to hear them singing his name, well, I'm just so happy for him. We all are.
