TAMPERE, Finland — Steam billows from the smokestack at the Tako cardboard factory, located on the Tammerkoski channel. The five-story building is massive, taking up a square block of the city. At night, with its red bricks and brightly lit signage, it looks both majestic and imposing.
Jussi Parkkila knows the building well. For seven years, he spent long hours inside, often using large machinery and making sure pieces of cardboard were the right size. His work times varied from early morning to overnight shifts.
Work at the factory wasn’t always fun, yet he refers to the stage of his life as “a great experience.” It was a steady job with good people. It gave him more of a backbone.
“But of course, that was not my dream,” the 45-year-old says now, 16 years removed from his shifts at Tako.
His dream was on the ice.
When Parkkila wasn’t working, he spent his time as a junior hockey goalie coach. Some nights, he’d have time for only an hour or two of sleep. Then it was off to the rink or the bus for a road trip with his team, spending time doing what he loved.
Parkkila didn’t experience the typical coaching origin story. None of that has stopped him from reaching historic heights. Now the goalie coach for the Colorado Avalanche, he keeps in mind how his career started. Coaching in the NHL, he makes a point to never say he’s going to work.
“I always say, ‘I go to the rink,’” he says.
Because, after working at the factory, he knows “what the real work is.”
Born in Tampere, Finland’s second largest city, Parkkila was taken by goalie gear as a child and began playing the position. His career didn’t last long, though. He stopped at around age 18, when he enlisted in the Finnish military for his year of required service.
Coaching eventually took out of Tampere; he lived in five different countries as he moved up the profession’s ranks. This past summer, he became the first Finnish coach to win a Stanley Cup, the professional high point of what has been a remarkable journey.
Says Avalanche goalie Pavel Francouz: “It’s a Hollywood movie story.”
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