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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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.”

The 2010 IIHF World Championship gets underway today at 2:00 pm ET with a game between the USA and host Germany before an anticipated crowd of more than 76,000 at Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The full schedule, and team rosters and statistics are available (or will be shortly) at the tournament web site.

No fewer than eight members of the New York Rangers organization have traveled to Germany to play in this year’s tournament. Team USA will be well represented, with current Rangers Brandon Dubinsky and Matt Gilroy joining 2009 first-round draft pick Chris Kreider on the side. A pair of defensemen — 23-year-old Marc Staal and 19-year-old rookie Michael Del Zotto — will skate for Canada while fellow blueliner Michael Roszival will represent his native Czech Republic. Goaltender Chad Johnson, who spent most of the season with the Hartford Wolf Pack, will also represent Canada, though isn’t expected to see much playing time. Artem Anisimov rounds out the Rangers contingent, representing Russia, which will be looking for its third consecutive World Championship title.

Select games of the tournament (primarily those of Team USA) will be broadcast by Universal Sports in the US. Check for availability in your area here. Some games will also be available online (see right sidebar here.) UPDATE: Online feed isn’t free this year. Games are $.99 each or $14.99 for the package. Universal Sports will also be hosting a Hockey Worlds Blog with the latest news and information from the tournament.

Fans not living in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, USA, China, France, or Germany can also buy individual game broadcasts, team passes, and full tournament broadcast packages here. TSN will be broadcasting the games in Canada; the broadcast schedule is available at their web site.

I’ll be scouring the ‘net for online feeds of Russia’s games that aren’t being broadcast stateside (their opening game vs. Slovakia at 2pm on Sunday will be) so if you’re interested (and don’t mind not understanding the commentary) follow me on Twitter, where I’ll post links to the ones I find. And Chris Johnson will be covering the tournament for the Canadian Press, so follow him too.

Know of other links that those wanting to follow the World Championship might find useful? Post ‘em in the comments.