by Lindsay Nottingham
Lindsay Nottingham is a recent University of Illinois graduate with a BS in Geology and minors in French and Anthropology. She now attends Fort Hays State University where she is pursuing a Master's Degree in Paleontology and Museum studies. In the future, she hopes to work in museum paleontological collections. This blog entry draws on her love of ice hockey and all things Finland. She wrote this blog post for 418 “Languages and Minorities in Europe” in Spring 2023.
The National Hockey League(NHL) is a professional ice hockey league with 32 teams across North America—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada.
The NHL is considered to be the top-ranked professional ice hockey league in the world. Because of this elite status, the league attracts players from around the world. One country with significant representation in the league is the nation of Finland. Compared to the general population, players in the league are from Finland at a much higher rate. Finland makes up 0.07% of the world population,1 but 5.1% of the players in the NHL.2 These players often end up living in areas without a significant Finnish population.
To start, we’ll look at the environment Finnish players are coming into in the United States. According to the US Census, Finnish Americans make up a whopping 0.20% of the US population with ~650,000 individuals.
Of the 51 Finns in the league, 44 play for US teams, where they make up 5.7% of the players.3 And of these 44, half of them play on one of five teams. From this, it seems that Finnish players seem to congregate on certain teams, as opposed to being evenly distributed throughout the league, which would be expected.
The five teams with the most Finns are the Carolina Hurricanes with five, Colorado Avalanche with four, Dallas Stars with five, Florida Panthers with five, and Nashville Predators with three.
The states of these teams make up only 12% of the Finnish-American population. Notably, the states with the highest number of Finnish Americans— Minnesota and Michigan, which make up 30% of Finnish Americans— are not represented.
With the lack of a sizeable Finnish community in the states they play in, the players of these five teams become their own communities. Language makes up a large part of any cultural identity, and Finnish is no exception.
This is compounded by the fact that Finnish is a very unique language. Finnish is one of the four EU languages not a part of the Indo-European language family, alongside its sister language Estonian, as well as Hungarian and Maltese, of which the first three belong to the Uralic language family.
While not officially the national language of the United States, English holds the same relative status as a national language. Amongst NHL teams, the same is true: despite there being no “official” league language, English holds that same relative status. This is a result of English having an extremely high utility, as for the majority of the league, mutually intelligible versions of English are the vernacular language. (The exception here is that of the Montreal Canadiens, where alongside English, French has a high utility and is the vernacular language of many staff).
But for scenarios involving foreign players, English changes from a vernacular language to a vehicular language, as parties no longer share the same vernacular language. In this case, it becomes a sort of ‘lingua franca.’ When a team has players with four or five native languages, and those languages are often variable based on rosters, having a ‘lingua franca’ allows everyone to communicate in a streamlined way. And being in the United States/Canada, where English is the default language, making English the ‘lingua franca’ for teams makes sense, as it has such a high value for utility. Thus, foreign players are expected to communicate in English on-ice.
As English is not their vernacular language, there is less ease of communication, which brings in another hallmark of a ‘lingua franca’—as the goal is efficient communication, correctness is not of the highest priority.
As put by Braden Holtby, for whom English is his vernacular language, but on-ice is communicating mainly with people for whom it is not: “We're like cavemen, really, with one-word answers. We're really dumbing things down here.”
Coming from the other side, Tuukka Rask, for whom Finnish is his vernacular language, conveys a similar experience: “It took me probably a few months to say the right words…It's just a couple words you need to say, but you're thinking Finnish words instead of English words.”
Both Holtby and Rask were goaltenders4 which is a position in which communication with teammates is paramount, as you are the last line of defense, and usually play the whole game and need to communicate your actions to all teammates.
They both also touched on another important characteristic of using English as a ‘lingua franca’: it varies according to context, speaker, and purpose. The words and phrases used by each player are going to vary based on what they need to communicate, and by nature of the goal being efficiency, the vocabulary will be that that is most relevant to the players, not necessarily the basics of the language itself.
David Crystal touched on this when speaking in Belgrade about World Englishes. The version of English any non-native speaker speaks is one that is relevant to them. Hockey English is going to have its own vocabulary and specialized terms that an outsider might not understand because they don’t have the background that the players do. Language use is inherently tied to the culture of the speaker, in this case, first and foremost, the game of hockey.
While they become better at communicating in English over time, the identity status of English never changes. Their native, vernacular tongue remains that with the most subjective capital.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi, a Finnish player for the Carolina Hurricanes, was recently acquired from the Montreal Canadiens, where he had one Finnish teammate. In a recent interview, he discussed the concept of coming to North Carolina and the Hurricanes and how the community of Finns is a strong aspect of the team.
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| Figure 1: (L-R)Pekka Rinne, Mikko Rantanen, Miro Heiskanen, and Sebastian Aho posing at the 2019 NHL All Star Game Source: Getty Images |
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Figure 2: Map of the 32 NHL teams' locations across North America. Colors refer to divisions- pink for Pacific, yellow for Central, blue for Atlantic, and green for Metropolitan Source: Wikimedia Commons(backdrop) and Wikipedia (labels) |
To start, we’ll look at the environment Finnish players are coming into in the United States. According to the US Census, Finnish Americans make up a whopping 0.20% of the US population with ~650,000 individuals.
Of the 51 Finns in the league, 44 play for US teams, where they make up 5.7% of the players.3 And of these 44, half of them play on one of five teams. From this, it seems that Finnish players seem to congregate on certain teams, as opposed to being evenly distributed throughout the league, which would be expected.
The five teams with the most Finns are the Carolina Hurricanes with five, Colorado Avalanche with four, Dallas Stars with five, Florida Panthers with five, and Nashville Predators with three.
The states of these teams make up only 12% of the Finnish-American population. Notably, the states with the highest number of Finnish Americans— Minnesota and Michigan, which make up 30% of Finnish Americans— are not represented.
With the lack of a sizeable Finnish community in the states they play in, the players of these five teams become their own communities. Language makes up a large part of any cultural identity, and Finnish is no exception.
This is compounded by the fact that Finnish is a very unique language. Finnish is one of the four EU languages not a part of the Indo-European language family, alongside its sister language Estonian, as well as Hungarian and Maltese, of which the first three belong to the Uralic language family.
While not officially the national language of the United States, English holds the same relative status as a national language. Amongst NHL teams, the same is true: despite there being no “official” league language, English holds that same relative status. This is a result of English having an extremely high utility, as for the majority of the league, mutually intelligible versions of English are the vernacular language. (The exception here is that of the Montreal Canadiens, where alongside English, French has a high utility and is the vernacular language of many staff).
But for scenarios involving foreign players, English changes from a vernacular language to a vehicular language, as parties no longer share the same vernacular language. In this case, it becomes a sort of ‘lingua franca.’ When a team has players with four or five native languages, and those languages are often variable based on rosters, having a ‘lingua franca’ allows everyone to communicate in a streamlined way. And being in the United States/Canada, where English is the default language, making English the ‘lingua franca’ for teams makes sense, as it has such a high value for utility. Thus, foreign players are expected to communicate in English on-ice.
As English is not their vernacular language, there is less ease of communication, which brings in another hallmark of a ‘lingua franca’—as the goal is efficient communication, correctness is not of the highest priority.
As put by Braden Holtby, for whom English is his vernacular language, but on-ice is communicating mainly with people for whom it is not: “We're like cavemen, really, with one-word answers. We're really dumbing things down here.”
Coming from the other side, Tuukka Rask, for whom Finnish is his vernacular language, conveys a similar experience: “It took me probably a few months to say the right words…It's just a couple words you need to say, but you're thinking Finnish words instead of English words.”
Both Holtby and Rask were goaltenders4 which is a position in which communication with teammates is paramount, as you are the last line of defense, and usually play the whole game and need to communicate your actions to all teammates.
They both also touched on another important characteristic of using English as a ‘lingua franca’: it varies according to context, speaker, and purpose. The words and phrases used by each player are going to vary based on what they need to communicate, and by nature of the goal being efficiency, the vocabulary will be that that is most relevant to the players, not necessarily the basics of the language itself.
David Crystal touched on this when speaking in Belgrade about World Englishes. The version of English any non-native speaker speaks is one that is relevant to them. Hockey English is going to have its own vocabulary and specialized terms that an outsider might not understand because they don’t have the background that the players do. Language use is inherently tied to the culture of the speaker, in this case, first and foremost, the game of hockey.
While they become better at communicating in English over time, the identity status of English never changes. Their native, vernacular tongue remains that with the most subjective capital.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi, a Finnish player for the Carolina Hurricanes, was recently acquired from the Montreal Canadiens, where he had one Finnish teammate. In a recent interview, he discussed the concept of coming to North Carolina and the Hurricanes and how the community of Finns is a strong aspect of the team.
How did you really feel about leaving Montreal?It felt great to get a new opportunity (with the Canes). I was excited to get to play with a bunch of Finnish guys here and be a part of the culture with them. Of course, there are people in Montreal that I miss. It was a good three years there, but I'm really happy to be here.Now that you're here with the Finnish guys (Aho, Puljujarvi, Raanta, Teravainen), what's your favorite aspect of it?You can converse with anyone in English, but sometimes you just need to feel like home. And as Finns, we get to do that. We get to talk about how things are back home and other things. It helps.What teammate was the hardest to say goodbye to [...] when you left Montreal?Probably Joel Armia … We're from the same hometown and we were really close. He lived right underneath me so we'd hang out every day and we had a good bond.
The sentiment from Kotkaniemi is clear: being on a team with other Finns makes it feel like a home away from home. While his English is clearly good enough to communicate with others, he expresses that it still is a vehicular language for him. Being on a team with several players with the same vernacular language as him allows them to use the language that has a higher sense of identity for them, which is an important aspect of maintaining personal identity far from home.
Overall, language use by Finnish players is variable based on the scenario. When they have the chance to communicate in their vernacular language, they jump at the chance to do so. That language is inherently tied to their culture and sense of identity. But as a league, English is the main language, serving for some as a vernacular language, and some as a vehicular ‘lingua franca.’ And as the goal of a ‘lingua franca’ is the efficiency of communication with those who do not share the same vernacular language, there is little reason for players who share a vernacular language to use the ‘lingua franca’ amongst themselves. So while far from home, in a place with not many other speakers of the same language, they are able to form a tight-knit community between the few that do.
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1 Population 5.6 million
2 51 players out of the 999 who have played an NHL game as of March 23 2023
3 44 players out of the 770 who have played an NHL game as of March 23 2023 and play for a US team
4 Rask recently retired, and Holtby is currently injured and unsigned
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Sources
Images:
Figure One:
1) 2019 Honda NHL All-Star Game - Metropolitan v Central
SAN JOSE, CA - JANUARY 26: Pekka Rinne #35 of the Nashville Predators, Mikko Rantanen #96 of the Colorado Avalanche Miro Heiskanen #4 of the Dallas Stars and Sebastian Aho #20 of the Carolina Hurricanes pose following the 2019 Honda NHL All-Star Game at SAP Center on January 26, 2019 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images, https://www.nhl.com/predators/news/photos-best-of-2019-nhl-all-star-weekend/c-304224576)
Figure Two:
1) Uncleben85, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
2) “NHL.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHL.
Text Sources:
1) Derhemi, Eda. FR418 Slides
2) Kaplan, Emily. “Lost in Translation: How Players Bridge Hockey’s Language Barrier.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 31 Oct. 2017, www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/21236032/nhl-lost-translation-how-players-bridge-hockey-l anguage-barrier.
3)NHL.com. “Official Site of the National Hockey League.” NHL.Com, www.nhl.com/.
4) QuantHockey,
5)
6) www.quanthockey.com/.
7) Ruff, Walt. “Mailbag #56: Jesperi Kotkaniemi.” NHL.Com, NHL.com, 19 Mar. 2023, www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/mailbag-number-56-jesperi-kotkaniemi/c-342314568.
8)"David Crystal - World Englishes." YouTube, uploaded by BritishCouncilSerbia, 7 Dec. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q9b9YqGRY.
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