HELSINKI/TAMPERE – Finnish hockey lost one of its greats on Thursday morning when Pekka Marjamäki, 64, died of a heart attack in Tampere. Marjamäki represented Finland in ten World Championships and twice in the Olympics, and wore the blue and white national team sweater 251 times. He also won five Finnish championships with Tappara Tampere, the club he joined as a 14-year-old.

In 1975, Marjamäki had just won a Finnish championship, his first, with Tappara, to go along with the 1974 silver and the 1973 bronze. Kalevi Numminen, Marjamäki’s former defensive partner, had taken over the team as a head coach, and had brought in new off-season work ethic. In 1974-75, Tappara played 36 games in the Finnish top division, and lost only three of them.

Marjamäki was voted into the league’s All-Star Team, and later that season, he led the Finnish national team in scoring in the 1975 IIHF World Championship in West Germany, with six goals and eight points.

“All I had to do was shoot one-timers off Pekka Rautakallio’s passes,” he later said, in a typically understated way.

Finland finished fourth, tied in points with Sweden, with the goal difference determining the fate of the bronze medal. Marjamäki was voted into the World Championship All-Star Team and named the tournament’s Best Defenceman.

Marjamäki, famous for his thundering slapshot, also scored the first overtime goal in the history of the Finnish league in March 1976. Tappara played in the SM-liiga finals every year between 1976 and 1979, and won two of them, in 1977 and 1979.

“The more ice time I got, the better I played. There were games where I only sat on the bench for a couple of shifts. Of course, you had to be smart and not work too hard in the offensive zone, which I had a tendency of doing. I suppose you couldn’t do that anymore,” he said in 2004.

After two seasons with HV71 in Jönköping, Sweden, Marjamäki returned home to Tampere and Tappara, and won two more SM-liiga titles - and added a silver - before retiring in 1984.

Tappara retired Pekka Marjamäki’s number 3 in 1998, and the same year, he was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame as the second Finnish player. He was inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990.

Before today's game against France a moment of silence will take place and the Finnish national team will wear black armbands in the memory of Marjamäki.

RISTO PAKARINEN