Goaltender Jussi Olkinuora achieved international fame by helping Finland achieve greatness in the Winter Olympics and World Championship.

Story and photo by Mark Newman

Jussi Olkinuora might not be a household name in North America, but he probably has more tales to share than most hockey players his age, which only seems fitting given that both of his parents were journalists and knew the value of a good story.

Not many goaltenders can say they have won two gold medals, let alone in the same year, as the Finnish-born Olkinuora managed to do in 2022. The 32-year-old capitalized on his “season for the ages” by signing a free-agent contract with the Red Wings last summer, which is how he ended up in Grand Rapids to continue to pursue his NHL dream.

Born in Helsinki, Olkinuora grew up in Tampere, the second-largest urban area in Finland, home to the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame and the Moomin Museum (dedicated to the country’s ever-present fairytale characters who resemble cute, white hippos).

His father, Hannu, served as editor-in-chief of major metropolitan daily newspapers before his passing in 2012 due to an aggressive form of cancer. His mother, Hilkka, is now a noted theologian and author after starting her writing career as a financial reporter.

The youngest of seven children, Olkinuora is the only athlete in the extended family, but he bears the influence of his parents: the competitive streak of his father and the fierce independence of his mother, who remains an outspoken voice in the family’s native Finland.

“My parents taught me to have critical thinking,” said Olkinuora, who tries to read as much as he can but admits “in today’s world, to read is a dying art.”

“Being in sports, I meet a lot of journalists, so it’s interesting for me. Most players think it’s silly and sports are indeed filled with cliches. Sports themselves are very monotone. You can only say so much and [as a player] you don’t want to give up any details or secrets to your opponents. It’s an interesting dynamic because there’s not much a player wants to give and often there’s not much that a journalist can use.”

Olkinuora started skating at 7, eventually gravitating to the goaltending position more out of necessity than any pronounced desire.

“The coach would say, ‘Whose turn is it to be the goalie?’ And everyone would say, ‘Not me. Not me. Not me.’ And it just fit my personality, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ If the school needed someone to be the singer in a musical, I would be the one at age 10 who would volunteer to do it. It’s not because I am easygoing. I would be ashamed and I would hate it, but someone had to do it.”

And so he became a goalie because someone had to fill the net.

“I don’t think I took hockey that seriously until probably at college when I realized I could do it professionally,” he said. “That was a blessing for me because I didn’t burn out at a young age. Eventually, I realized this is probably what I am best at doing.

“In fact, I’m still playing because I think I am good at what I do and nothing else is even close.”

He came to North America for the first time at the age of 16. “My parents wanted me to live abroad as an exchange student,” said Olkinuora, who ended up in Salt Lake City, where he played for Chadder’s AAA junior hockey team. “Thankfully, I was able to mix hockey with that experience, but hockey wasn’t the purpose.”

Coming overseas for the first time was an adjustment. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but it was different,” he said. “You have to learn which shampoo to pick, what is conditioner, which stores have what, things like that. It’s eye-opening to live in a different country.”

Fortunately, speaking the language was not one of his challenges. “English was always a strength,” he said. “I used to watch the Cartoon Network before school and when you’re good at something and you enjoy it, you become even better at it. It’s like a snowball.”

Even today, Olkinuora continues to test himself. He currently has a streak of more than 800 days on the Duolingo language app, rotating among French, Spanish and Russian.

It was during his time in Salt Lake City that he says something sparked his interest in potentially playing college hockey. “I realized it was something I could do, but truthfully I wanted to play major juniors,” he said. “I wanted to play in Canada because I thought that would be a better route, but nothing came out of talking to coaches so I went back to Finland for two years.”

He kept emailing coaches. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I made my own highlight video,” he said. “I sent it to 60 schools and most of them, probably 40, didn’t respond. Half of the ones who did respond either said I was messaging the wrong person – ‘I’m the head coach; I don’t do the recruiting’ – or they said they were already filled. A few said that I should come over and play juniors so we can see you play live because a two-minute clip of highlights with rock music in the background isn’t doing it.”

So Olkinuora returned to play for the Sioux Falls Stampede in the USHL. “I came back for a year in South Dakota because it was a major hub for recruiters. But it was not a good year and I received no college offers, so I went home for the summer and figured I would turn pro there.”

Three schools, however, did express interest even though they didn’t have anything concrete to offer. One of the schools was the University of Denver, where he was recruited by the man who would later become the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings.

“Derek Lalonde recruited me but I never met him because he left before I got there,” said Olkinuora, who played two seasons at Denver, where he flourished under the direction of David Lassonde, the school’s goalie coach.

“He was demanding but we clicked,” Olkinuora said. “Obviously when you’re playing well, you cherish those memories, which maybe seem better than they are. But I had a great time in Denver, mostly because of how we worked together.”

Olkinuora admits that he’s one of those guys who feels that he needs a goalie coach.

“The goalie position is somewhat unique where you can benefit guidance,” he said. “It’s a cliche but it’s a solo sport inside a team sport. Your own game doesn’t necessarily reflect the team’s performance and vice versa. You might play well and you can lose, or you might play poorly and you still win. You need a goalie coach who can see that and fix things.

“Things might be going well but a goalie coach may tell you, ‘Hey, you’re getting away with it, but you need to fix this and that.’ Of course, as you get older, you realize that the goalie coach is not always necessarily right. When you’re younger, they’re always right. Eventually, you learn to take some things and let other things go. The great goalie coaches understand that.

“With the best goalie coaches, there’s a dialogue. First off, they ask questions. Not everyone does that. Secondly, they also listen. They’re curious about what will work and what will not. And their best students are open to trying new things. I’ve always tried to be open-minded and not be stubborn.”

It was in college that Olkinuora learned about everything from proper work ethic to the little things that become routine as you develop your technique.

“People say that being a goalie is mostly mental,” he said. “We all have physical attributes, more or less similar, but it’s the way you think, the way you handle pressure, how you think or not think about the big picture that matters.

“As a goalie, you’re out there alone for the whole game, so I do understand the idea that it’s more mental than physical. That’s why the best goalie coaches haven’t necessarily been the most technically inclined people. They know that while you’re out there performing, they are the ones that should be doing the thinking. The goalie should not be thinking.”

After his sophomore season, he signed with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets in April 2013. He spent the next three seasons shuttling between the team’s AHL and ECHL affiliates. The first two years meant going from the west coast (the ECHL’s California-based Ontario Reign) to the east coast (Newfoundland, where the St. John’s IceCaps of the AHL played).

“That was before the minor leagues had optimized the distances between teams,” he said. “I had a great time in California. Being in the ECHL, for me, was the best place to play at the time. I played close to 30 games in a row at one point, whereas in the AHL, I only played once every two weeks.

“In California, the sun is shining every day. Our team was first in the league and we had 10,000 fans a game. That being said, I told myself after every season that I’m never going back to that league again. And still, I spent three years there.

“I felt like I was better than the ECHL, but I didn’t get to play much in the AHL and when I did, it was a disaster. As a young guy, you need a lot of repetition and confidence-building and the team wasn’t good so it was a tough environment for me.”

Olkinuora decided to go back to Finland to re-establish himself.

“I became a lot more ambitious and reverse-engineered the path that I thought I needed to follow,” he recalled. “I still wanted to play in the NHL, but how do you get there? I need to play in the KHL, which is the second-best league in the world. How do I get to the KHL? I have to be on the national team. How do I get to the national team? I have to be a starter in Finland. How do I become a starter? I need to play well, become a starter, and then get some national team exposure because the KHL recruits national team guys.”

Everything went according to plan. After establishing himself as one of the best goalies in the Finnish Liiga, Olkinuora signed with the team in Vladivostok, Russia, which is where he became a teammate with Adam Almquist, a member of the 2013 Calder Cup-winning Griffins team.

“I’m glad that he was there for my first year because he’s a great guy,” Olkinuora said. “The travel wasn’t bad, but it was a lower budget team, and the lower the budget, the worse things are and the less organized it is. Sometimes it seems like there is no logic, but we got to places and we played the games.

“Vladivostok is a very scenic place, a former naval base where we saw submarines downtown every day. We called it the San Francisco of Russia, but the further east you go in Russia, the less English they speak. In my first year there, I had to learn Russian to survive. To talk to the cab driver, to book a reservation at the restaurant, or to order food, you have to learn real quick.”

The following season, Olkinuora found himself in Magnitogorsk, Russia, where he played with Andrej Nestrasil, another former Griffin (2011-14). “He’s another great guy, very genuine,” he said. “Being in Russia, it’s important to have good imports you get along with and I was really lucky to have met those two guys.”

By his third year in Russia, Olkinuora was feeling more and more comfortable, even though it meant being apart from his wife, Emily Usset, whom he had started dating during his college days in Denver. “Hockey was the main focus, the center of everything, so you get used to the other things,” he said. “It was an adventure.”

In February 2022, Olkinuora went to Beijing for the Olympic Winter Games. The captain of the Finnish hockey team was Valtteri Filppula, the former Griffins and Red Wings player who was honored as a flag bearer during the Parade of Nations for the Olympic opening ceremony. Olkinuora’s partner in the net was Harri Sateri, who played for the Griffins during 2018-19.

“There was speculation that NHL players might participate in the Olympics, so I thought there was only a small chance that I could make the team as the No. 3 goalie,” he said. “When the NHL backed out, I realized that I had a chance to play.”

China had zero tolerance toward COVID at the time, so strict protocols were in place. “Most of us had already had COVID but they kept me locked in a separate room for two days because they thought I was still testing positive when some of my values were still high.”

Olkinuora managed to see action in one game, out-dueling Magnus Hellberg and Sweden for a 4-3 overtime win. “Due to the protocols, I lost my chance to compete for the No. 1 spot, but it didn’t matter because Harri played unreal and we won the whole thing. I feel lucky that I even got to play one game. It was a cool experience and I have a gold medal to show for it.”

He returned to Russia, but a month later everything changed when Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

“I was coming off the high of the Olympics and I was excited about playing in the playoffs because I was the starter and we had a good team,” he said. “I thought we had a good chance and it was going to be the first time I might be able to win something with a club team.

“When the war broke out, people were calling me every day. The media in Finland started saying we were part of Putin’s propaganda because Putin loves hockey, he’s backing the league, and the KHL is his baby. So basically by us being there, we were showing support for the war, which was a bit of a stretch because if anything, we weren’t funding the war, we were taking money away from the war by being paid. But it’s the optics.”

Olkinuora was not happy that something political could affect his decision to play. “I was further from the border to Ukraine than Finland is and it wasn’t like this was a Brittney Griner thing,” he said. “I was just there playing hockey.”

He stayed long enough to appear in one postseason game.

“I played the first playoff game, but listening to the Russian national anthem was tough,” he said. “Suddenly it was like a 180-turn and I just couldn’t stay. All of the other Finnish players in the league were talking about leaving, so I thought then that there was no way I was staying.

“I felt so bad for the team. They didn’t understand what was going on because they have different news outlets, but the attack on Ukraine is very disturbing, it’s insane. Still, the decision was really tough, but I don’t regret it. I cut all ties with Russia.”

He flew to Saint Petersburg and he and the other Finnish players drove to Helsinki. “It’s sad because some of the guys had played for the same team for nine years and they had the same championship hopes,” he said. “I honestly thought I might finish my career in the KHL. Sometimes life happens.”

Thankfully, two months later, Olkinuora was able to leave all the negativity behind after he was named the MVP of the 2022 IIHF World Championship. “I knew it could be a season for the ages because it was the year of the Olympics and the World Championships at home. I had played in the previous world championships when we won silver, so I knew I had to chance to play.”

Finland won the gold medal behind Olkinuora’s stellar goaltending. He played five games during the group stage, posting four shutouts and allowing a single goal. During the entire tournament, he allowed only a total of nine goals in eight games, including a shutout streak of 206:44.

“Not many teams have won the tournament when they are hosting it, so that was a big priority for us,” Olkinuora said. “It was in my hometown, too, so it felt like, of course, we’re going to win it. We have to win. We had a really good team, so it was so much fun and something I’ll remember forever.”

Olkinuora signed to play this season in Switzerland, but he had the option to sign an NHL contract before June 15. When the Red Wings made a last-minute offer, he jumped at the opportunity. “I had to make the decision within an hour, right before midnight,” he said. “It was a good feeling. I had almost given up on coming back, especially at my age, but I feel like I still have a lot to give. I was excited to have the chance to make it happen.”

And so Olkinuora is waiting in the wings, hoping to help the Griffins make a second-half drive to the playoffs. The arrival of Hellberg and, more recently, Alex Nedeljkovic in Grand Rapids have cut into his playing time, but he is doing his best to wait his turn.

After a slow start, Olkinuora strung together several solid appearances between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.

“I feel confident about my game and I’m excited to play more,” said Olkinuora, who credits his wife Emily for keeping him sane and balanced. “I really think we can be successful the rest of the way. As always, I welcome the challenge.”