Helsinki hall | The Ice Hockey Federation is permanently fleeing from the Helsinki Hall

Ice Hockey Federation fleeing the former Hartwall Arena, which has been without power since last Monday.

The staff of the Ice Hockey League has already been moved from the office located in Areena to the shelters that were found in Sporttitalo on Helsinki’s Valimontie. However, this is only a temporary solution.

“We are now looking for new, long-term premises”, the chairman of the Ice Hockey Association Heikki Hietanen tells the editor.

Liitto is the second largest owner of Helsinki Hall. It owns Helsinki Halli Oy’s E-series shares, which entitle it to control the additional wing of the arena.

“We can no longer live in the kind of uncertainty” that the hall company’s situation is now causing.

However, does the association intend to return to its office premises located in Areena at some point?

“It is still impossible to assess at this stage”, Hietanen states.

Ice Hockey Federation decided on Monday morning not to pay Helsinki Halli Oy’s overdue electricity bill, which is around 15,000 euros.

On Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs granted the Ice Ho
ckey Association an exception to pay Helen Sähköverkko’s electricity bill, and even at that stage the association’s management said they were considering the issue.

“Based on our investigations, it would have been a matter of a solution lasting only a few weeks, and that was not in our interests at all,” commented Hietanen.

According to the editorial information, the Jääkiekkoliitto was initially not unanimous on the issue. In the end, the union’s board and operational management collectively turned to the same position.

“We need a permanent solution to the stalemate in the arena. It is the joint position of the union”, underlines Hietanen.

“Areena’s office facilities would not have enabled our staff to work at full capacity, even if the electricity had been restored. The hall company’s unpaid district heating bill causes too many problems for the staff’s work in any case.”

The chairman according to the association hopes that the city of Helsinki will finally take a proper role in solving the stalemate in the arena that has lasted for two and a half years.

The city of Helsinki has announced that it is considering starting the redemption process for the arena.

“Most of all, the association hopes that the arena would be brought into Finnish ownership through voluntary trading. That would be by far the best solution in this situation”, Hietanen sees.

Since last Monday, the hall company has maintained its critical functions with the help of backup power. Back-up power runs on diesel, and an exemption from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also required to obtain it.

If the reserve power runs out, the condition of the arena property is thought to collapse within a few days.

The electricity in the Helsinki hall was cut off a week ago on Monday. Picture: Paula Kaskimaa / IS

Ministry of Foreign Affairs leader of the sanctions team Pia Sarivaara in the interview he gave to STT on Friday, he was not yet able to say which entity will manage the arena’s total payment traffic and what kind of exemptions can be granted for it.

The former stalemate in the Hartwall arena is due to the sanctions imposed on the voting owners of Helsinki Halli Oy, which were essentially tightened after Russia started the war of aggression in Ukraine in February 2022.

Helsinki Halli Oy’s voting shares are managed by Arena Events Oy, where Russian oligarchs vote for the host Gennady Timchenko and Roman Rotenbergof which the Court of Appeal of the latter deems its acting uncle Arcade and his father Boris Rotenberg as a bulvan.