Photo: Hartford Wolf Pack

Finnish defenseman Ilkka Heikkinen has signed a one year contract with HC Sibir Novosibirsk of the KHL.  The 25-year old blueliner, who joined the Rangers as a free agent last summer and appeared in seven games for the club, chose to continue his career in the KHL after the Rangers refused to offer him a one-way contract.

Heikkinen played 72 games in the AHL for the Hartford Wolf Pack last season, picking up eight goals and 30 assists to tie defense partner Bobby Sanguinetti (who played 11 fewer games) for the Wolf Pack lead in scoring on  defense.  He saw limited playing time in his seven games in the NHL, and failed to register a point.

Heikkinen’s departure from North America comes as no surprise, since he made his displeasure with spending the season in Hartford known in an interview with Newsday’s Steve Zipay during the Olympic break in February.  While he played well for the Wolf Pack, he was largely overrated by Rangers fans desperate for anyone to replace dead weight Wade Redden on defense, and ultimately failed to show enough to earn the guaranteed position in the NHL that he was looking for.

After signing with Sibir, Heikkinen spoke with Maria Levinskaya for an interview on the team’s web site which is translated below.  While it reveals nothing earth shattering, it provides a better introduction to Heikkinen than we ever got during his one season in North America, and contains a few interesting anecdotes about his time on the Wolf Pack.

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Photo: Sovietsky Sport

In an interview in Sovietsky Sport, Russian head coach Viatcheslav Bykov revealed  that New York Rangers forward Artem Anisimov was unable to finish Sunday’s gold medal game at the 2010 IIHF World Championship in Germany due to a hand injury suffered in the first period of the game.  The young forward, who’ll celebrate his 22nd birthday today with a flight back to Moscow before returning to New York later this week, received pain-killing injections between periods but still wasn’t able to hold a stick.   He played only two shifts in the second period before sitting out the third.

Bykov, who said the coaching staff was “very happy” with the performances of both Anisimov and fellow youngster Dmitri Kulikov, also reported that Sergei Fedorov suffered a concussion as the result of his second period collision with Alexander Ovechkin. The 41-year old Fedorov was also unable to finish the game, leaving the Russians two centers short for the third period.

Russia lost the contest, 2-1, to Jaromir Jagr and an underdog Czech squad which was lead on defense by current Ranger Michael Roszival.  The much maligned blueliner led his team in ice time at the tournament and was named one of the Czech Republic’s top three players at the event, along with Jagr and goaltender Tomas Vokoun.

In addition to being an expert on Russian hockey, Alessandro Seren Rosso of RussianProspects.com also covers hockey for the Italian hockey web site Hockeytime.net.  He offered the following translation of a short interview with Rangers defenseman Michael Del Zotto that was done by one of his collegues at the World Championship in Germany.

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As Rangers fans are well aware, young defenseman Michael Del Zotto played for Team Canada at the World Championship in Germany. The Toronto, Ontario native skated in five games without getting on the score sheet. Hockeytime.net, an Italian hockey website, had a brief interview with the promising blueliner through journalist Fiorenza Zanchin.

Beyond the Blueshirts and Alessandro Seren Rosso offer you a translation:

Q: Hello Michael.  Your surname does sound Italian…

Del Zotto: “Yeah, my father comes from Friuli (an Italian region in the North Eastern Italy that borders with Slovenia and Austria), while my mother is from Calabria (a southern region), but I don’t speak Italian… I can understand the language, but it’s always been a problem for me.”

Q: When did you start playing hockey?

Del Zotto: “I learned to skate when I was three and I’ve play hockey since I was four.”

Q: Why did you pick hockey among all sports?

Del Zotto: “My father introduced me to hockey, my brother was playing too. I didn’t enjoy playing football much and thus I preferred keep playing hockey.”

Q: What does hockey give to you? Satisfaction, celebrity, richness?

Del Zotto: “None of this, I love playing. I enjoy hockey a lot, and of course you can earn well being a hockey player.”

Q: Why do you wear number 4 both in the NHL and with the national team?

Del Zotto: “I’ve picked up this number because I am a big Bobby Orr fan. I grew up with the Orr myth as my father was a fan of his too.”

Q: What do you think about Italian hockey after you faced Azzurri in the tournament’s first game?

Del Zotto: “It was not an easy game and Italy looked to me like a not bad team.”

Q: Did your relatives watch you on TV?

Del Zotto: “My grandfathers watched the game at home and I was excited as they were following me from Italy.”

Q: What’s your favorite NHL team, counting the Rangers out?

Del Zotto: “As I grow up in Toronto, I was a Maple Leafs fan, but many things changed now.”