Riikka Sallinen

Hanna-Riikka Sallinen ( Nieminen, previously Välilä, born 12 June 1973) is a Finnish retired ice hockey, bandy, rink bandy, and pesäpallo player. She is known as one of the most highly decorated and respected players to have ever competed in international women's ice hockey. She currently serves as assistant coach to HV71 Dam, the SDHL club that she captained in the 2018–19 season.

Sallinen played sixteen seasons with the Finnish national ice hockey team and earned two Olympic bronze medals, one World Championship silver and six bronze medals, and three European Championship gold medals. In 2007, Sallinen was one of the first two women inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame, along with defenceman Marianne Ihalainen. She was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame on 21 May 2010 in Cologne, Germany as part of the World Championship festivities; she was only the fourth woman and the first European woman to receive this honor.

Sallinen's bronze medal at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang made her the oldest player to ever win an Olympic medal in ice hockey, replacing her compatriot Teemu Selänne who set the record at the 2014 Winter Olympics after winning bronze in the men's ice hockey tournament at age 43. Sallinen was awarded the medal at age 44, twenty years after she first won an Olympic medal in the inaugural women's Olympic hockey tournament.

Sallinen announced her retirement from competition in April 2019, at age 46, shortly after achieving silver at the 2019 IIHF Women's World Championship.

Finland
Sallinen played eleven seasons in the Naisten SM-sarja and was a five time Finnish Champion, first in 1988–89 with Etelä-Vantaan Urheilijat (EVU), then in 1993–94 with the Keravan Shakers, and in 1996–97, 1997–98, and 2015–16 with JYP Jyväskylä. She scored 201 goals and notched 194 assists (395 points) in 135 regular season games, averaging 2.93 points per game across her Naisten SM-sarja career, and appeared in 41 Naisten SM-sarja playoff games, scoring 86 points, (36 goals and 50 assists).

International play
Riikka Sallinen represented Finland at three IIHF Women's European Championships, eight IIHF World Women's Championships, and four Olympics. She made her international debut at the 1989 Women's European Championship. In her first Olympics in 1998 she led the tournament in scoring, amassing 12 points (7 goals & 5 assists) in six games and leading the Finnish team to the bronze medal. Sallinen would also lead the Finnish national team to three European Championship titles and six IIHF World Women's Championship bronze medals and one silver.

Over her international career she would score 109 goals, 95 assists for 204 points while accumulating only 24 PIMs.

In August 2013, the IIHF reported that she was attempting a comeback and in December 2013, following several matches in the Naisten SM-sarja, she was selected for the Finnish women's team for the Sochi Olympics. She made the Finnish Olympic team again for the 2018 Olympics, helping Finland to a bronze medal.

Personal life
Sallinen was born Hanna-Riikka Nieminen on 12 June 1973 in Jyväskylä, Central Finland. She was raised in a sports-oriented home, her father and two older brothers were also successful athletes. Her father, Eero, was a Finnish Champion pesäpallo player in the 1960s. Lasse Nieminen, Sallinen’s eldest brother, played nearly 500 games with JYP Jyväskylä in the Liiga and currently serves as assistant coach to the JYP U16 juniors team. Juha “Jussi” Nieminen, Sallinen’s second eldest brother, played twelve seasons in the Superpesis with Jyväskylän Kiri.

Sallinen is a physical therapist by training and works in the public sector with disabled and permanently ill people, in addition to working with her husband in the family’s pain management and rehabilitation practice.

Sallinen and former Liiga player Mika Välilä were married in 2002 and divorced in early 2018. Their two sons, Emil Välilä (born 2003) and Elis Välilä (born 2005), play on the U18 and U16 teams of the Tappara ice hockey club respectively, the same junior organization in which their father developed.

Sallinen and osteopath Petteri Sallinen married in late 2018. They have a physical therapy practice in Sweden, in which each of them takes responsibility for one-half of patient care; Petteri focuses on alleviating patients’ pain and Riikka develops physical therapy regimens for rehabilitation. Petteri, a former film director, was previously married to actress and theater director Anu Hälvä; they divorced in early 2018, and have two children together.