Name: Mikko Koivu says thank you to Wild fans and talks next step: ‘I want to play’
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Mikko Koivu says thank you to Wild fans and talks next step: ‘I want to play’

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Oct 7, 2020First, even though this is not the purpose of this article, let’s not bury the lede.is not retired and plans to field phone calls once free agency opens Friday.He’s back in Finland training like he’s going to play. He has reflected a lot since his 15-year career came to an end, and Koivu has determined, “Bottom line, I want to play. My doors are open.”Koivu, the all-time Wild leader in games played, assists, points and dozens of other statistical categories and the first and only full-time captain in franchise history, had just finished dinner at home Tuesday night Turku time.He turned on the TV to watch HIFK of the Finnish Elite League play hockey.“They have that , the kid supposed to be a first-round pick in six or seven hours. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him play,” Koivu said of a center who indeed wound up drafted 12th overall by the . “He reminds me of me at a young age. When he gets more muscle and physically mature, he’s going to be really good.”Koivu and I had been playing phone tag for two weeks. Back-and-forth texts, WhatApp missed calls. We were supposed to grab a coffee before he left town, but it just never worked out.The reason for Koivu initiating the contact?Koivu wanted to express his gratitude to you, the fans, and the Wild staffers who took care of him for years, from the locker-room attendants to the equipment and medical trainers to the doctors to the security people, valets and even the reporters and broadcasters who covered him.“Like Cindy (Sweiger) in the front office, I mean, (equipment manager) Tony DaCosta, these are the people you call for anything, these are the people that took care of me forever,” Koivu said. “You leave, and all of a sudden you realize how much you miss these people.”Yes, , but it’s hard to express every thought in such a virtual setting.And Koivu felt he left some things unsaid.It has been an emotional time since Koivu was told he wouldn’t be re-signed.Hey, Koivu gets it. He’s 37, the Wild are trying to get younger and general manager Bill Guerin is in the midst of a roster overhaul.But it doesn’t make leaving the one NHL market he has ever played in, the place where he literally grew up from being a baby-faced, steely-eyed kid to a grizzled, steely-eyed adult and had all three of his kids, any easier.Before Koivu left Minnesota, he stopped by Xcel Energy Center to pick up his belongings.The last thing he did before he exited was stop at the darkened Zamboni tunnel. He peeked out at the concrete floor that used to hold the ice, the sheet of ice that Koivu skated out onto last of any Wild player during opening night introductions for so long.He’d skate out slowly, lift his stick with one arm and say, “Thanks.”Leaving the arena, Koivu was stopped in his tracks as he stared at the empty rink and reminisced.“Those are the times that I don’t think you necessarily realize at the moment, but when you look back, how special it was to be the captain, to play in front of those fans in Minnesota,” Koivu said. “When you remember the moments, I think that’s when you take pride as a hockey player that you got to be part of an organization like that. The fans, they’re the ones that definitely make that feeling for you. It’s something special in Minnesota and it takes a while to actually realize what hockey actually means for all the people there. It truly is a hockey state.”Koivu, drafted sixth overall in the 2001 NHL Draft, has spent the past couple months talking to a lot of retired hockey players. What he learned from all of them is you want to retire in your own terms.Koivu still loves to play. An injury didn’t end his Wild career. Or, in his opinion, old age.Even though he may not be a top-six center anymore, he’s still one of the league’s best in the faceoff circle, is still a great penalty killer and is still as tough as they come in a shutdown role.When it came to even-strength expected goals against regularized adjusted plus-minus — a metric which attempts to isolate a given player’s contribution on the ice — Koivu ranked 52nd out of 432 forwards with at least 200 minutes played last season. That’s basically the same level defensive impact as four-time Selke Trophy winner . Over the last three seasons combined (1,000 minutes minimum), he’s third-best in the league among forwards.So Koivu is looking for a challenge, and slipping on another team’s sweater would certainly offer him that.“I think you always need a challenge not just as a hockey player, but as a person as well. Like, what drives you?” Koivu said. “In hockey, you’re not going to work ‘til you’re 60 years old. So I think you also realize that it goes by quick and that you appreciate it more and more once you get a little bit older and you see some of your teammates retire.“How do I say this? I think it needs to be a right fit, obviously, but I feel that I still have hockey left in me. I think once you’re in the NHL, you also realize everything that goes into it and I think it can be a new challenge for myself, an opportunity to experience something different than I ever have. I think it’s something that I definitely will consider really hard.“Like I said, I think the bottom line is that I still feel that I want to play. I’m getting ready for another season. If the right fit will be there, and the right team, I will definitely play.”So on Friday, Koivu will have his cell phone on. So will his agent, Gerry Johansson. He’s a bit nervous. Koivu has never spoken to another team’s GM in his life about a new gig. He was drafted 19 years ago in Minnesota and just kept re-signing there.“I’ve never been in a situation before, so I don’t really even know how it works with free agency and all that,” Koivu said, laughing.There are teams that may make sense in terms of an interest level: the , Montreal (where Mikko’s older brother, Saku, was a captain), Pittsburgh, Columbus and Florida are a handful.The team that arguably makes the most sense? The .Fit and comfort will be especially important to Koivu, and could there be a better fit and comfort level than if he signed with the team that has Chuck Fletcher as GM and as assistant coach? The mutual respect level between Koivu and those two men is off the charts. Plus, , one of Koivu’s best friends and his longtime Wild roommate, works for the Flyers in a development role and lives in New Jersey.But Koivu didn’t want to speculate which teams may call or which teams he’d be mostly interested in.Before leaving Minnesota, Koivu hosted a going-away party at Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub.He invited those very special people that helped him throughout the years: Wild doctors, trainers, team services people, broadcasters, security.By all accounts, Koivu, who last season became the first Wild player in history to play 1,000 games in the team’s sweater, got extremely emotional as he thanked everybody during a speech.“You know, the people that you worked with so long, you appreciate them every single day once you go to the rink,” Koivu said. “Like the staff working at the Xcel, you get to know them as people. The trainers, the docs, even the press, these are the people that work with you on a daily basis. You see them every day, you joke with them, you spend time with them, but you don’t realize it’s going to end. That you’re not going to see them every day anymore.“What’s the word that I’m looking for? It’s not sad necessarily, but … I have it in Finnish right now, but … you just miss them right away.“I’m going to miss them. I’ve been fortunate enough to be with them all this time. Like the doctors, you see them at the rink on the game day, you get to know them personally. And, of course, the staff, the trainers, you get to know them very well. They’re some of my best friends. Of course, you’re going to miss your teammates, but it’s weird, that’s the business we’re in. When you’re in a spot for so long, teammates come and go. You’re traded, contracts don’t get renewed. You realize that. But the staff never leaves. They’ve been part of my life for so long, and you appreciate them in your life.“I think that hits you. At least it did for me. As a young player, you don’t always appreciate what you have. But once it’s behind you, then you do.”Koivu turned to the fans.“I always remember when I got drafted,” Koivu said. “The first thought, the first reaction from me, I recognize the success that the team coaching staff and management had and what they’d done in hockey. Jacques (Lemaire), Mario (Tremblay), Rammer (Mike Ramsey), Doug Risebrough. You knew that side of it, and you were happy. But what I didn’t realize being from Finland, and I always remember me talking to my dad at the draft, once Minnesota selected me, he told me I would love it because it’s a hockey state.“It’s a hockey environment. I didn’t know it at the time because it was basically a new team in the league, but how important it was for me to play in a hockey environment. Once you get older and grow up and get to know more people and get to know their mentality when it comes to hockey, how passionate they really are from all the way from kids playing to the college, the high school hockey, all that, I think it took me a few years to realize how big hockey really is and how much I appreciated that. I think it also taught me a lot. It’s like you take pride that the people cheering for the Wild have so much knowledge about the game and how much they follow it. It grew into me. I think with the time it just got more and more important to me, not just the team, but also the people around it and how actually, how much they do care. Wild fans have passion for the game. That’s something that really got me.“I will really miss the fans. It’s impossible to thank everyone. How much I appreciate them, the way they treated me, and the passion that they have for the game. I just want to say thank you and I hope they know that it’s really been a pleasure to be a part of the organization for so long. The way the fans treated myself and my family, I wish I could thank everyone individually, but hopefully people realize that.“And so that’s a chapter in my life, and it’s changing, but that’s what I’ll always remember and appreciate about Minnesota.”(Top photo: Bruce Kluckhohn / NHLI via Getty Images)

Oct 7, 2020First, even though this is not the purpose of this article, let’s not bury the lede.is not retired and plans to field phone calls once free agency opens Friday.He’s back in Finland training like he’s going to play. He has reflected a lot since his 15-year career came to an end, and Koivu has determined, “Bottom line, I want to play. My doors are open.”Koivu, the all-time Wild leader in games played, assists, points and dozens of other statistical categories and the first and only full-time captain in franchise history, had just finished dinner at home Tuesday night Turku time.He...

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Michael Russo

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Mikko Koivu says thank you to Wild fans and talks next step: ‘I want to play’

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