Jarmo Sakari Wasama (December 2, 1943 in

Elimäki Elimäki (Swedish: ''Elimä'') is a former municipality of Finland. It was located in the province of Southern Finland and was part of the region of Kymenlaakso. The municipality had a population of 8,199 and covered an area of 391.74 km² ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

– February 2, 1966 in

Tampere Tampere ( , , ; sv, Tammerfors, ) is a city in the Pirkanmaa region, located in the western part of Finland. Tampere is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries. It has a population of 244,029; the urban area has a population o ...

, Finland) was an

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

player who played in the SM-sarja. He played for

Ilves Ilves (; Finnish for " Lynx") is a Finnish professional ice hockey team based in Tampere. They play in the Liiga at the Tampere Deck Arena. The colors of Ilves, green, yellow, and black, were taken from what was then the coat of arms of the city ...

. He was inducted into the

Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame The Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame is housed in and administered by the ('Finnish Ice Hockey Museum'), a part of the Vapriikki Museum Centre, in Tampere, Finland. The was founded in 1979 with the mission to record, document, and exhibit objects, ...

in 1985. Wasama won two championships (one after death), one silver and two bronzes. He was elected to all-star team 5 times (one after death). Wasama possessed good skills for a defenseman in Finland and it is much speculated would Wasama have been the first Finnish player in the NHL. He competed in the men's tournament at the

1964 Winter Olympics The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games (german: IX. Olympische Winterspiele) and commonly known as Innsbruck 1964 ( bar, Innschbruck 1964, label=Austro-Bavarian), was a winter multi-sport event which was celebr ...

. In February 1966, Wasama lost his life in an automobile accident that resulted from foggy weather conditions. While on his way home from practice, Wasama's car struck a

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...

which had stalled on the road. Wasama's car also had a passenger, his father, who did suffer some injuries but survived the accident. Wasama's father, Matti was also a former Ilves-player. Wasama's jersey number 2 was immediately retired from use by Ilves. The trophy which is handed out to the best "rookie" player in

SM-liiga The SM-liiga (marketed as just Liiga from 2013 on), (Finnish for ''League'') colloquially called the Finnish Elite League in English or FM-ligan in Swedish, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of the six founding leagu ...

is named as

Jarmo Wasama memorial trophy The Jarmo Wasama Memorial Trophy is an ice hockey award given by the Finnish Liiga to the best rookie of the season. The trophy is named in honor of Jarmo Wasama, a young Finnish defenseman who was killed in an automobile accident in 1966. In 2020 ...

in honour of Wasama.

International play

Despite his young age by the time of his death Wasama had already played 74 times for national team including 3 World Championship tournaments and 1 Olympics. The list included the 1965 World Championship tournament which was the first one held in

International statistics

Career statistics

References

External links

Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame bio
1943 births 1966 deaths People from Elimäki Finnish ice hockey defencemen Ice hockey players with retired numbers Ilves players Olympic ice hockey players of Finland Ice hockey players at the 1964 Winter Olympics Road incident deaths in Finland Sportspeople from Kymenlaakso {{Finland-icehockey-defenceman-stub