It’s going to be weird to walk in the Wild locker room again and not see the stoic face and steely, blue eyes of Mikko Koivu staring daggers in one’s direction.
Sometimes he was serious. Most times you knew he was kidding by the subtlest of grins.
It’s going to be very weird not to sidestep his dripping-with-sarcasm barbs aimed at anybody in earshot and very, very, very weird to never, ever have to walk on eggshells again when you asked him a question after a loss.
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Many of us will miss covering Koivu.
Nobody will miss interviewing him after a loss though.
Just ask my The Athletic colleague, Chad Graff.
Back in October 2013, when the guy I affectionately call “Chadley” was covering the Wild for the Pioneer Press, the Wild lost for the sixth time in their first nine games.
A sweaty, tired Koivu was fresh off the mushy South Florida ice after missing a shootout attempt. He was predictably cranky after the Wild blew a one-goal, third-period lead.
We tiptoed over to his stall as he ripped the tape off his socks.
Being the smart veteran reporter, I, of course, started off by throwing the softest of softballs at Koivu. I still held my breath and hoped he wouldn’t snap my head off.
Chad, being the naïve but gutsier reporter, followed up by asking Koivu about the Wild’s 1-for-5 power play and two ghastly ones in the third period.
NHL players get five minutes to cool down after a loss before the locker-room doors swing open.
It used to be 10, but the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association persuaded the league to decrease that amount of time because of the tighter and tighter deadlines in the newspaper world.
Koivu was a player who needed an hour to cool off. Maybe two.
Koivu absorbed Chad’s question. He then animatedly took about five deep breaths, slowly looked both ways, returned to center and in the most deliberate of manners looked straight into Chad’s eyes and answered the question while gritting his teeth into sawdust.
From the time Chad asked his question to the time Koivu answered, it took 14 seconds. I timed it with my recorder.
I glanced over at Chad, and he looked like he was going to throw up all over Koivu’s skates. That’s how much color left his face.
As much as we all loathed interviewing Koivu after a loss, it’s also what I respected most about him.
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He hated to lose almost as much as he loved to win, and Mikko Koivu loved to win.
Those are the types of players you want in your dressing room. Players who care. Team guys. Character guys. Loyal guys. And Koivu was all four. He loved playing for the Wild. And he loved playing in front of Wild fans.
Friday morning, Koivu held a Zoom to talk about his departure from the Wild and the place he essentially grew up as an adult and had all three of his children.
It truly was the end of an era.
The Minnesota Wild were born in the Year 2000. Koivu was drafted in 2001. He was the face of the franchise. The all-time leader in games played. The all-time scoring leader. The all-time leader in countless other categories. The first and only permanent captain in team history.
Congratulations from all of us, Mikko. 💚#M1KKO | #mnwild pic.twitter.com/pEjr4TBxat
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) December 11, 2019
One day, when COVID-19 finally becomes just an awful memory and 18,000-plus hockey fans are once more allowed to fill Xcel Energy Center, Koivu will hopefully be honored as the first player in franchise history to have his sweater raised to the rafters.
It’s hard to envision somebody wearing No. 9 again.
Koivu saw it all with the Wild. Every coach, every GM, and, amazingly, 210 teammates.
Koivu played in the only outdoor game in franchise history. In 2010, he proudly showed off his country to the entire organization when the Wild opened the season in Helsinki against the Carolina Hurricanes.
He took his teammates to Sauna Island and was an absolute rock star when Finnish hockey fans dressed in Koivu jerseys swarmed the arena for Wild practice.
On Friday, Koivu didn’t go as far as to announce his retirement because even he doesn’t know what the future will bring. He wasn’t prepared to say for certain if he’ll never play hockey again “because you don’t want to take words back,” he said. “I have to make sure that it’s very clear what I want for the future and when the time’s right, then come out with it.”
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Back in the springtime, not long after the NHL paused due to the pandemic and not long after he declined to waive his no-move clause to accept a trade to another team, Koivu opened the door to potentially ending his hockey-playing career with the only other professional team he has ever played for, his hometown TPS Turku in Finland’s SM-liiga.
But the Finnish Elite League’s 2020-21 season has already started and nobody knows when the 2020-21 NHL season will begin.
His time with the Wild is over, but Koivu will likely still have hockey options, in Finland if not the NHL. (Bruce Kluckhohn / NHLI via Getty Images)
NHL free agency opens Oct. 9. Koivu will almost certainly field phone calls, so he’s leaving the door open in case an appealing NHL opportunity comes his way.
Maybe a contender will come calling and Koivu can pursue that elusive long playoff run and Stanley Cup.
Koivu has started working out again and is returning home to Finland on Tuesday. Once there, he hopes to start training with Turku so he can ramp things up in case he decides to either sign with them for a final swan song in his native country or return to the NHL and actually put on another team’s sweater for the first time.
“I just want to give myself a chance physically if there’s a chance (that) I can play,” Koivu said.
The only thing Koivu does know is if he returns to the NHL, it won’t be for the Wild.
Koivu didn’t feel it was appropriate to say if he would have re-signed with the Wild if he could have. Regardless, general manager Bill Guerin informed Koivu last month that it was time for the organization to move on and that he wouldn’t be offered another contract.
Koivu is 37 and was relegated to fourth-line duty and no power-play time in the second half and Stanley Cup playoff qualifying round.
Deep down, he probably gets it, but still said, “It took me a couple days, a couple of weeks, to sink in and kind of mixed emotions when you think about it. But that’s the nature of the business. And now just got to find a new challenge for myself and go with that.”
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Koivu was reminded that he said back in February that he couldn’t even imagine putting on another NHL team’s jersey.
Has that changed?
“I think you always take pride (in playing for one team),” Koivu said. “You want to be loyal as a player and for the fan base and for the whole organization. That’s what I had in Finland. I’ve only played for one team there. Now here. But I think when it’s not your option, or it’s not your decision, it kind of makes it easier if you do want to still keep playing and put another jersey on.
“But like I said before, I think that’s something that I still have to think about and kind of be patient with it as well and see if the right opportunity comes. And then (maybe) you have a chance to experience something that you haven’t.”
There’s no doubt Koivu had his naysayers and critics. He never won enough and never scored enough for the liking of some fans.
But while some complained about what Koivu didn’t do, there were many who appreciated what Koivu did do.
For 15 seasons, Koivu played the game with an intensity, honesty and effort level that was second to none. Top players on other teams despised playing against him. Think about the type of players he battled against on a nightly basis, yet he had two barely-minus seasons in the past 14 years.
And he was a team guy, through and through.
One reason why he was difficult to interview after games is because he felt everything should be kept in-house. He wouldn’t divulge strategically why the Wild couldn’t get something done on a given night. He would never assess blame publicly about any coach or teammates or GM. If you asked him about a big play he made, he turned it around and talked about the team.
And if you picked on one of his teammates, he’d lose his mind on the ice.
Just recall last November in Arizona when he felt former Wild goalie Darcy Kuemper spent the first period trash-talking the well-regarded Eric Staal. In the second period, when Koivu scored the first goal of the Wild’s come-from-behind win, Koivu fist-pumped in Kuemper’s direction, then shouted angrily at the goalie.
GOOOAAALLL!
Mikko Koivu gets the @mnwild on the board with a power play tally.
📱 https://t.co/kI5XI4tDuu pic.twitter.com/XrcTS0XJEp
— FOX Sports North (@fsnorth) November 10, 2019
Sure, Koivu was fiery, especially with linesmen in the faceoff circle. But that scene was atypical of Koivu’s personality, except when he thinks for one second that you’re disrespecting the classy Staal of all people.
He’s the only Wild player to skate in 1,000 games for the club, and fittingly, it was in that 1,000th game last November that Koivu scored his franchise-best 42nd and final shootout goal with the team. He used his signature forehand, deke, backhand, roof move and when that goal clinched a victory against the Dallas Stars, the captain was mobbed on the bench by his teammates.
Mikko Koivu capped a day of milestones by scoring the shootout winner as the @mnwild extended their point streak to nine games (6-0-3). #NHLStats pic.twitter.com/Hfu6E1BsfP
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) December 1, 2019
“It was the perfect ending to a special day for him,” teammate Zach Parise said that night.
Koivu was proud and humbled and appreciative, and that’s the biggest shame of the way he’s going out.
Because of the coronavirus, Koivu never got a proper sendoff from the fans he played for over the past 15 years. He never got that final home game to say goodbye.
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Koivu, predictably, was pretty level-headed and classy about that notion Friday.
“When you play the game of hockey or you play any sport, you want the fans to be around you,” he said. “That’s probably one of the biggest reasons why we play the game and why we enjoy it. … For us at the XCel and the passion that they have, for sure, that’s the goal. That’s what you want to have.
“But at the same time, I also appreciate that I had a chance to experience the bubble and seeing how much went into that and the job that the NHL did with it and being able to just experience that playing with no fans and the whole life that goes into that. So I think for sure you always want to have that experience and when it stopped like that, you didn’t realize it might have been the last game here, and it was. So it wasn’t perfect by any means. But, at the end of the day, nothing I can control right now.”
It’ll be interesting to see now what Koivu chooses.
Does he retire outright? End his playing days in Turku? Or actually sign with another NHL team for the first time in his career?
Last November, Koivu’s brother, Saku, the Montreal Canadiens’ former captain, talked with The Athletic about his decision to leave the Canadiens after 13 seasons and sign with Anaheim Ducks.
“It was time for me to leave Montreal. But with Mikko, he’s a different person than me,” Saku said at the time. “I really don’t see him anywhere else other than a Wild jersey. It really means everything to Mikko that he’s played only for one team, that he’s been captain in Minnesota for so long, that he’s been their franchise player.
“For me, it would be really weird to see him in any other jersey than the Wild.”
(Top photo: Brad Rempel / USA Today)
