Leino recovering

Ville Leino is back home in Savonlinna, holding his own hockey school for children and recovering from the hip surgery that was done during the draft weekend.

"We've been cleaning up the hip a bit and fixed it", Leino explains. "When the whole recovery process is done, I should be in a pretty good shape. The hip should be good in time."

"The injury came in time. The hip got worse after I had played a certain amount of time. Now it was time to do something about it."

"I'll start some rough conditioning after two weeks, working it about four hours a day. Of course I try to enjoy the summer in Philadelphia, too. It's hot there; it's been about +40C there this week. It's a good week to come to Finland and relax at +27C."

The skinny Leino jokes he's not able to show off even after a successful season.

"Even if I've been working out now, I still can't go walk around shirtless on the streets here."

"But the spring is a warm memory. Of course it would've been great to win. They don't give silver medals there for second place. It does bother when it's so close, but still so far away. The Cup is the only thing I'm trying to get there."

"There was good and bad in the season. It started pretty well, but then I went down in the hole. It was a tough season, but it got better again in the end."

"Now I have a good feeling to start next season when I could show that I could play. I think the front office has faith in me and I have confidence in myself, too."

The Chicago Blackhawks goaltender Antti Niemi also returned to Finland recently and went on to praise the atmosphere at the games in Philadelphia.

"I think the crowd in Philadelphia was probably even louder than in our place", Niemi recalls. "The fans there gathered around to grill outside the arena already in the morning. It was totally amazing."

Niemi thinks the Flyers just ran out of gas in the finals.

"They are a good team, but they probably ran out of gas. They played the same players a lot."

Niemi says he hasn't talked to Leino or Kimmo Timonen in the summer.

"I didn't really talk to them after the finals. I just told them they played good games. There wasn't much more to it, really."