Ice hockey | Aapeli Räsänen is smarter than 98 percent of the population – “Learning has always been easy for me”

SM league club KalPa’s center forward Aapeli Räsänen visited HS I’m smart –on the podcast. The native of Tampere, who played and studied at Boston College, has been considered an exceptionally intelligent puck player, and there is also a cover for that.

Räsänen, 25, has passed the Mensa test, in other words, achieved a better result than 98 percent of the population in the intelligence test approved by the organization.

In the podcast, Räsänen spoke, for example, about utilizing his spatial imaging ability in hockey.

“It has already been thought about before the Mensa test, even at a fairly early stage. Learning has always been easy for me and school has gone well with little effort,” Räsänen commented on when he realized he was smart.

“The amount of work that had to be done for certain grades was not as big as what the classmates seemed to have to do. For me, the best way to learn was to be awake during lessons. Not much else needed to be done,” he clarifies.

Hockey players are not considered smart in general stereotypes, although studies show that professional athletes are on average smarter than other people. Räsänen believes that the myths are slowly being broken.

“Perhaps it has to do with the fact that hockey players have a tendency to be lively or even a little disruptive at school. Maybe that’s how the loudest team athletes have to some extent branded the whole group.”

Senteri also talks about how spatial perception is tested in hockey. For example, when bringing the puck up at high speed, the center has to observe a huge number of things. You have to know where the other players are going.

“Other sports, such as ice hockey, are more reactive, in ice hockey there are not very many stagnant situations. You have to react a lot to the things happening around you.”

Aapeli Räsänen got to play against his parent club in the spring playoffs. Picture: Ossi Ahola

The Tappara native wrote a good grade M in the long mathematics essay. It is the third best of the grades. He doesn’t think long math is directly useful for hockey, but math is otherwise.

“There must be a certain kind of mathematical thinking and talent. It has been talked about that there is a connection between spatial visualization ability and game intelligence.”

Räsenen according to the hockey world, there are plenty of other smart people. When asked about the smartest player he knows, he names his candidate from his current team, KalPa.

“We have several very smart puck players at KalPa, which is really great. We have really good discussions and exchange of ideas. I roll a triple like Tuomas Kiiskinen, Jaakko Rissanen and Jesper Mattila. Often there is a really high-level exchange of ideas with them, but often also very low-level.”