Boston College Athletics
Matti Kaltiainen: For The Fun Of It
February 16, 2004 | Men's Hockey
Feb. 16, 2004
by Will Shapiro
Boston College Media Relations
Matti Kaltiainen has come a long way. And we are not talking only about the plane ride from his home of Espoo, Finland to The Hub. Kaltiainen has vastly improved himself in several ways. He has honed his goaltending skills tremendously during his tenure at Boston College. He has gone from being an inexperienced kid in a country where he could not even speak the language to being a worldly and happy young man who has become a locker room favorite of his teammates. Kaltiainen is a pleasant person who never has anything negative to say and it is not difficult to see why he gets along so well with his teammates and coaches. Not to mention he crouches in the goal as the last line of defense for one of the nation's elite college hockey teams, something he did to the tune of a 2.20 goals against average last season, a performance that earned him the Hockey East goaltending title. But the thing that stands out about Matti Kaltiainen is that throughout the grind of being the goaltender for the Boston College Eagles, he has not lost sight of why he plays this game: for fun.
Matti's hockey career began inauspiciously, to say the least. He just wanted to keep up.
"I started playing when I was 5, and it was only because my big brother (Antti, now 26) was playing," said the junior netminder. "I didn't start as a goalie. I was just a regular player and I was pretty bad. I was playing with guys who were a couple of years older and I was just lost on the ice. I wasn't having much fun and I almost quit hockey."
Even though his brother played a bit in his youth, Kaltiainen does not come from a "hockey family." It would have been very easy for him to try another calling. At 6-2, 207 pounds, he has always had an athletic frame and he could have tried several different sports. But then the crease came calling.
"When I was a kid, we had practice one day and they were just trying different guys in the goal. I tried it and it was a lot of fun. And all I had to do was know how to stop the puck. I think that was better for me."
And so Kaltiainen stuck with hockey for just that reason: it was fun. And that fun continued until he moved up to an older club team in his adolescence.
"When I was 12 or 13, the team I was playing on decided to make me a defenseman. I played the whole season as a defenseman and I all I could think about was how much I missed being a goalie," Matti said. "I almost quit hockey again, but they finally let me be the goalie again."
And a career was born. In Finland, high school teams work a bit differently. According to Matti, high school teams did not play games. Rather, they just had practice three times a week. If you wanted to play competitive hockey, you had to join a club team, which Kaltiainen did.
"I guess some of the club teams were like junior league teams here. We didn't have a league to play in, but we still got to travel all over Finland, playing in tournaments and exhibition games. And my club coach was the same as my high school coach, which was great for me."
As Kaltiainen traveled with his club team, he began to improve his goaltending, but he never found himself playing in the games. The element of fun that had always been so important to Matti was starting to fade yet again, and again he considered hanging up his skates.
"I was the third goalie on the team and even though I thought I was good, I was just practicing, not playing. The team I was on always brought in new goalies and never gave a chance to the younger players, so I didn't really have a future with that team, so I went to try something else. I thought about playing in a junior league in Canada, but I just never got there. The first one to talk to me about college hockey was UMass-Lowell's assistant coach. He was from Finland and he told me I should take my tests and get everything together in case I wanted to play college hockey. But then UMass-Lowell changed coaches and I didn't hear anything about that. But then the Bruins drafted me and maybe that's how Coach York heard about me. But it all worked out."
It certainly did work out. Kaltianen came to Boston College, a place he has grown to love. That is due, in large part, to the people around him.
"All the guys here are so nice and the coaches and players and all the people were so helpful that I didn't have any problems when I moved here, except for the language. My English was really bad, so it was tough in class when I first got here. I was always tired my freshman year because I just had to think so much about everything, both speaking and understanding. But I got a lot better."
Better in more ways than one. After a freshman season serving primarily as the backup, Kaltiainen slid comfortably into the starting role in 2002-03, taking home the conference goaltending title and preserving a shutout in BC's 1-0 victory over Ohio State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Still, despite all the pressure and the daily grind and the transition to a new country, Matti still plays more than anything for fun.
"The thing I remember most about playing with those club teams in Finland is that everyone was just having so much fun. At the tournaments and in the hotels, we had a great time. Every guy was just having so much fun on the ice and away from the ice. It wasn't as serious as it is now. It was different, but I'm still trying to do the same thing now. I'm trying to have as much fun as I can on the ice, but now I just have to work hard, too."
