A second of silence was held earlier than each recreation in Finland’s high skilled hockey league Wednesday following the killing of former participant Janne Puhakka over the weekend.
Puhakka, a ahead who spent two years with the QMJHL’s Chicoutimi Sagueneens and performed professionally in Finland and France, was discovered shot to loss of life in his dwelling on Sunday evening. He was 29.
Police arrested Puhakka’s former associate, Rolf Nordmo, a 66-year-old Norwegian veterinarian, and are conducting a homicide investigation as a result of they believe it was a premeditated act, based on a number of Finnish media stories, citing particulars confirmed by a police launch. Nordmo has reportedly confessed to the crime and is cooperating with police, telling them that his motive was not accepting the latest finish of his relationship with Puhakka after 10 years.
Puhakka was Finland’s first brazenly homosexual male professional hockey participant. He got here out publicly in 2019 after the tip of his taking part in profession and launched a 2022 memoir known as “Ulos Kopista” — which roughly interprets to “Out of the Locker (Room).”
The SM-liiga — Finland’s high professional males’s league — launched an announcement saying, “Janne Puhakka was an necessary function mannequin, and his braveness and openness left an indelible mark on Finnish hockey.”
The native of Espoo, Finland, represented his nation in a number of worldwide competitions as an adolescent and received bronze on the 2013 world under-18 championship. After spending two years taking part in junior hockey in Chicoutimi, Puhakka appeared in 40 Liiga video games with the Blues throughout the 2015-16 season and went on to play for TuTo Turku and Espoo United in second-tier Mestis earlier than ending his profession with Hole HC in France.
Information of his homicide has made main headlines in Finland, the place Nordmo appeared remotely in a closed-door court docket session on Wednesday.
Later that evening, moments of silence had been noticed in Puhakka’s honor earlier than 5 Liiga video games and two Champions Hockey League video games involving Finnish groups.
Ennen illan jokaista Liiga-ottelua, sekä Tapparan ja Pelicansin CHL-otteluissa, pidettiin hiljainen hetki Janne Puhakan muistoa kunnioittaen.
📸: @r1kuexposures | #Liiga pic.twitter.com/AKK9eEyNzN
— Liiga (@smliiga) October 16, 2024
(Photograph of Janne Puhakka in 2014: Richard Wolowicz / Getty Pictures)
