Aatos\u2019 immediate family accompanied him to Montreal, and he got a taste of Saku\u2019s enduring popularity among the city\u2019s hockey-crazed fans. Saku played 13 seasons as a forward for the Canadiens (1995-2009) and was captain for nine of them (1999-09).<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, they recognized him a lot,\u201d Aatos said. \u201cBut I was kind of surprised, I think they kind of stayed calm. I mean I saw a lot of mouths going, \u2018There\u2019s Saku! There\u2019s Saku!\u2019 But nobody really did that much. A couple came to ask for a picture, maybe an autograph, but they handled it really well. Nobody got crazy or anything, so nothing to complain about.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Aatos had no complaints about how he and the rest of the Canadiens prospects were treated during the three-day camp at Montreal\u2019s practice facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been just unbelievable,\u201d he said. \u201cThe staff, everyone here is just so nice and I can see that they\u2019re here for us. They\u2019re willing to do everything for us just so we can have a great week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koivu had eight points (one goal, seven assists) in 32 games as an 18-year-old with TPS of Liiga last season, his second in the top professional league in Finland. His season was interrupted by a bout of mononucleosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a little sick during the season right before the [World Junior Championship] and I was five weeks out,\u201d said the forward, who will play for TPS this season. \u201cAnd at first I think I felt pretty good in the Liiga and I enjoyed the whole season. I loved playing there but there were a lot of ups and downs. At first I was feeling great and then I got sick, maybe a little downfall there, but I learned a lot from that season even though maybe I didn\u2019t play as much as the other players. I mean, they\u2019re older, they\u2019re more experienced, so it\u2019s normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had tough times with the team, so how we build up from those as an individual and as a team, you know, I learned a lot and it definitely did good for me that season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aatos said he was speechless when he visited Bell Centre during camp and dreams of one day skating there as a member of the Canadiens, just like his father.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be something so special,\u201d Aatos said. \u201cI can\u2019t even find the words for that. Hopefully someday I\u2019m going to be enjoying every minute of it, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aatos\u2019 immediate family accompanied him to Montreal, and he got a taste of Saku\u2019s enduring popularity among the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":95710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-95709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114923054523374112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}