Kari Heikkilä

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FinlandFinland  Kari Heikkilä Ice hockey player
Date of birth January 10, 1960
place of birth Kangasala , Finland
size 181 cm
Weight 79 kg
position defender
Shot hand Left
Career stations
until 1983 Ilves Tampere
1983-1986 Luleå HF
1986-1989 Ilves Tampere
1989-1991 HC Vita Hästen
1991-1992 Ilves Tampere
1992-1994 SHC Fassa

Kari Heikkilä (born January 10, 1960 in Kangasala ) is a former Finnish ice hockey player and coach who played for Ilves Tampere in the SM-liiga and Luleå HF in the Elitserien , among others, from 1979 to 1994 . Most recently he was the head coach of Rauman Lukko .

Career

Kari Heikkilä began his career as a hockey player at Ilves Tampere , for which he was active in the SM-liiga from 1979 to 1983 . The defender then moved to Luleå HF in Division 1 , the second highest Swedish ice hockey league, before the 1983/84 season . With the Swedes he achieved promotion to the Elitserien in the first year , where Heikkilä spent another two seasons with the team. In 1986 Heikkilä returned to his Finnish homeland, where he worked for his former club Ilves Tampere for three years. From 1989 to 1991 the Finn was again on the ice for HC Vita Hästen in the second Swedish league, before playing for Tampere in Finland again in the 1991/92 season. Finally, he ended his active career in the Italian Serie A , where he was under contract with SHC Fassa until 1994 .

Immediately after the end of his career, Heikkilä took over the Swedish second division club IF Sundsvall Hockey as a coach in 1994 , with whom he stayed for two years. This was followed by a season at their league rivals Boden IK. For the 1997/98 season Heikkilä returned to Finland, where he coached the first division club HPK Hämeenlinna , in which he was released shortly after the start of the season. After a two-year commitment at Vaasan Sport in the second-class I Divisioona , the former defender was given another chance to work for a first division club in the summer of 2000. With Kärpät Oulu he was runner-up in the following four seasons in 2003 and Finnish champion in 2004 . For the latter success, Heikkilä also received the Kalevi Numminen trophy as the best coach of the season.

Heikkilä (center) as coach of HK Dinamo Minsk , September 2012

In the 2004/05 season Heikkilä trained Lokomotiv Yaroslavl from the Russian Super League . After only one season he joined the Espoo Blues from the SM-liiga, for which he worked until 2007. He then received another contract in Yaroslavl. With the Russian he became Russian runner-up in the 2007/08 season and was again with the team in the final series for the championship title at the end of the 2008/09 season , but failed again at the later champions. In February 2010 he was released in Yaroslavl.

In the 2010/11 season Heikkilä was the head coach of HK Metallurg Magnitogorsk from the KHL and reached the playoff semi-finals with this. In August 2011, he signed a three-year contract with the Belarusian Ice Hockey Association as Belarusian national coach . From April 2012 he was also head coach of HK Dinamo Minsk from the KHL, but was dismissed in October 2012 due to unsuccessfulness. Likewise, his contract as national coach of Belarus was dissolved.

In the 2013/14 season he initially worked as an advisor to Neftechimik Nizhnekamsk before being promoted to head coach in March 2014. He was dismissed from this position in mid-October of the same year. In July 2015 he was introduced as the new coach of Dinamo Riga and served in this position until January 2016 before he was fired. He then supervised Ilves Tampere as head coach, where he replaced Tuomas Tuokkola .

At the beginning of the 2016/17 season he was without a job before he became the head coach of Rauman Lukko in November 2016, succeeding Juha Vuori .

Elitserien Statistics

Seasons Games Gates Assists Points Penalty minutes
Main round 2 70 5 22nd 27 61
Playoffs - - - - - -

Achievements and Awards

As a trainer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Finnish coach for Belarus - Kari Heikkilä to lead national team until 2014 Worlds in Minsk. In: iihf.com. August 16, 2011, accessed November 27, 2017 .
  2. ^ RIA Novosti , KHL: Heikkila Fired as Dynamo Minsk Coach
  3. ↑ Fín Heikkilä bude trénerom Dinama Riga - HokejPortal.sk. In: hokejportal.net. July 3, 2015, accessed July 6, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Heikkilä, Kari
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish ice hockey player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Kangasala , Finland