A Stanley Cup winner in Colorado in 2001. A Stanley Cup finalist in Calgary in 2004. A longtime international star with his native Finland. But Ville Nieminen will always be remembered for the sheer exuberance of his presence, regardless of the jersey he was wearing.



At the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, Nieminen, a role player on the Finnish team that would lose to Canada in the final, took it as his daily duty to help those covering the tournament pry a few words out of taciturn netminder Miikka Kiprusoff, sometimes posing hilarious questions of his own and sometimes answering as though he was Kiprusoff.



Drafted 78th-overall by Colorado in 1997, Nieminen played in 385 NHL regular season games before returning to Europe to play in the KHL and Finnish Elite League, where he played on a line with Aleksander Barkov.



When his playing career ended during the 2014-15 season, he joined the coaching ranks in Finland and continues to make a name for himself as an...