BOSTON — From the very beginning of 4 Nations Face-Off, Team Finland has been saying one of their biggest advantages is how well they know each other.
Finland is a small country, roughly 5.5 million people, and the hockey community is even tighter. Play the game at an elite level in Finland, and chances are you will cross paths with the other elite players at some point, either as a teammate on national teams or as an opponent.
Relationships are formed over the years, so that by the time you are in the NHL and gathered at an event like this, you are old friends, and it seems like it was only yesterday you had been together.
Everyone on the team has repeatedly insisted on the universal truth of this reality in Finland, which is what makes Niko Mikkola such an outlier.
Did his defense partner in this event, Esa Lindell, have much of a prior relationship with Mikkola?
“Uhh, no,” Lindell said. “Actually no.”
How about Mikkola’s Florida Panthers teammate, Anton Lundell? Did he know him before Mikkola signed with the Panthers as a free agent in 2023?
“Not that well, no,” Lundell said.
Captain Aleksander Barkov gave perhaps the best response in describing his prior relationship with Mikkola before he signed with the Panthers.
“I did not have a relationship with him,” Barkov said, “but I knew him really well … I might have skated with him in the summers. Obviously, we Finns know each other really well from just being from Finland.”
This is appropriate because Mikkola is not that well known by many hockey fans, either, aside from those in South Florida, but he is having a big impact on this tournament and will be a vitally important player for Finland as it faces Canada on Monday with a spot in the 4 Nations championship game on the line.
Lindell and Mikkola sit second and fourth in average ice time in the tournament, with Lindell at 26:26 and Mikkola at 23:42. He played in Florida’s top four on defense during the Panthers’ run to the Stanley Cup last year and has done the same for them this year, playing a physical brand of hockey against top opponents.
With Finland getting the last change Monday as the home team against Canada, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby will surely be seeing a lot of Mikkola.
“I think my game is built on the playoff style,” Mikkola said. “I like to play hard, I like to play tight games and have a little pressure.”
Niko Mikkola battles with USA’s Auston Matthews in Finland’s opening game at 4 Nations Face-Off. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
At 6-foot-6, 208 pounds, Mikkola is a load to play against, and he knows how to use that frame to lean on opponents. Midway through the second period of Finland’s opening game of the tournament against the United States, Mikkola and Brady Tkachuk had a long, hard battle in front of the net, leading Tkachuk to take a swing at him. As the two of them headed toward their respective benches once the puck left the Finland zone, Tkachuk gave Mikkola one last hit. Mikkola got up and hit him right back, taking a swing at Tkachuk of his own as he fell to the ice.
“He’s a big guy, really physical, and moves really well for a guy his size so he covers a lot of ice,” Barkov said. “Really good stick, making really good plays. He was huge for us last year and keeps doing the same thing this year.”
His five-on-five numbers playing primarily on a pairing with Dmitry Kulikov with the Panthers this season are exceptional, but Lundell insists Mikkola is not solely a defensive defenseman. When Mikael Granlund scored the overtime winner against Sweden on Saturday afternoon, it was Mikkola who was up on the rush with him waiting for a pass that never came.
“He was a huge part of our run last year and a big reason we had success,” Lundell said. “He played some big minutes against top lines, he did his job, he was very steady, very calm. But at the same time, he’s got some offense, even if you don’t always see it.
“Some of us joke in practice and call him ‘Niko Norris’ because he’s getting up in rushes, always trying to find open ice and open lanes to get some pucks to the net.”
Mikkola is yet another example of how the Panthers are a well-managed team. He signed a three-year contract with Florida in the summer of 2023 worth $2.5 million a year after playing seven playoff games with the New York Rangers on the bottom pair that year. He broke into the NHL full-time with the St. Louis Blues in 2020 at age 24, signed a one-year contract with the Blues in 2022-23 and was shipped to New York with Vladimir Tarasenko at the trade deadline after minimal contract talks with the Blues went nowhere.
Then, the Rangers allowed him to hit unrestricted free agency, and the Panthers pounced, offering Mikkola a role higher up the lineup than he had ever played before.
“There were a few teams interested, but I think the whole package was the pretty obvious choice,” Mikkola said. “I had a pretty good role to take there in Florida, good team, a couple of Finns out there also.”
He quickly made an impression on his new Panthers teammates.
“He’s been unreal for us,” defenseman Gustav Forsling said. “I think a very big part of our defense and our team. He was a big part of our success last year. He gives 100 percent every night, blocking shots, hitting people, defending really well.
“That’s a guy you want to play with.”
“Niko Norris” might be a running gag for Lundell and some of the Panthers, but there’s a deep respect for Mikkola’s game behind the joke.
“Mikksy’s an unbelievable guy, an unbelievable player,” Lundell said. “He’s very underrated in my opinion, he does a lot of hard and very good things during a game and he’s very hard to play against.
“He’s one of those guys you hate to play against but love to have on your team.”
Now it is Canada’s top players who will be hating to play against Mikkola. The unheralded Finnish defense — missing Miro Heiskanen, Rasmus Ristolainen and Jani Hakanpää — has been a bright spot in the tournament. It was looked upon as its biggest weakness, and while it would be a stretch to call the blue-line group a strength, it has more than held its own.
Lindell was always likely to be playing minutes like this even if Finland were fully healthy, likely on a pairing with Heiskanen, his Dallas teammate. But it is Mikkola who has stepped into a much bigger role because of all the injuries, a top-pairing shutdown defenseman preparing to face some of the most potent offensive players in the world on Monday afternoon.
“He’s ready,” Forsling said. “He does that for us. Shutting people down is his job on our team, so it will come natural for him.”
(Top photo of Niko Mikkola skating ahead of Gustav Nyquist: Vitor Munhoz / 4NFO / World Cup of Hockey via Getty Images)
