Heika: Unoriginal Six; How juggling six languages affects Stars' communication

Hockey is one of the fastest games in the world, requiring lightning-quick decisions and team-wide communication.

So what happens when you don’t speak English and play in the NHL?

“You have to work extra hard,” Stars coach Lindy Ruff said.

The Stars have six players on the roster (and several more in the minors) for whom English is a second language. They are at varying stages of development — as players and as linguists. Valeri Nichushkin is trying to grasp English and struggles to speak it. Kari Lehtonen now uses English as his primary language, and has changed how his brain works.

“When I first came into the league, I would have to translate in my head and change everything back to Finnish,” said the 30-year-old goalie from Helsinki, Finland. “Now, I think in English most of the time when I’m around people speaking English.”

Such processing is complicated for players, who have to soak up instruction in practice, communicate on the bench during games and then ultimately deal with teammates while play is racing around them on the ice. It’s something that can make or break a team.

“It’s on the coaches to make sure they understand, and so we try a lot of different things,” Ruff said. “You use video or translators or teammates to get the message across.”

The Stars have used translator/coach Stan Tugolukov to help with Nichushkin, who came from Russia at age 18 last season. But Antoine Roussel speaks French, John Klingberg speaks Swedish and Jyrki Jokipakka speaks Finnish. You can’t have that many translators, so a lot falls on the coaches and players to find any way to communicate.

“I assume that when I explain it verbally, that they don’t get it,” Ruff said. “If I ask if they understand and they say ‘yes,’ I assume that’s not true because they simply don’t want to be embarrassed by saying no. If I want them to understand something, the best way is to show them.”

Ruff is in an era where that’s actually the way coaching is done. He jokes that many of the players who speak English don’t understand his spoken instructions, and it’s clear that younger players like to learn visually. Former Stars associate coach Willie Desjardins, now head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, was a proponent of visual learning, mixing video with the “whiteboard” he always carried around.

“It’s how kids grow up, it’s how they are trained in school and life, so we have to adjust to that,” Desjardins said two years ago.

Still, the burden to learn a new language goes beyond understanding instructions.

Lehtonen struggled when he was drafted by the Atlanta Thrashers. He said that when he would have a thought in his head, it would be in Finnish. He then would have to think how to translate that thought into English so he could yell instruction to a teammate. Likewise, when he heard something told to him, he would translate that back to Finnish in his head to better understand it.

While the process happens amazingly quick, there still can be delay in the high-speed game of hockey.

“I didn’t know any better at the time, so I just did it,” Lehtonen said. “Now, I look back and it probably did slow me down. You just do the best you can and learn to adapt.”

Lehtonen’s wife is from Atlanta, and he now speaks English primarily. He said that has helped him learn the language and process information. He said he only slips back to Finnish thoughts on the ice when he’s with Finnish players. He played a preseason game with young defensemen Jokipakka and Julius Honka, and said he was surprised what happened.

“When I played with those two guys, I started shouting to them in Finnish,” Lehtonen said. “That was weird.”

Roussel was born in France and moved to Quebec when he was a teenager. He said there is a significant difference between French in France and Quebec, so he really speaks three languages. Teammates joke he has his own language.

“You can’t understand him in whatever language he’s speaking in, so I’m not sure it makes a difference,” joked Vern Fiddler.

Even Roussel’s inner dialogue is confusing. Asked if he thinks to himself in French or English when he’s in a game, he replied: “French. … No, English. … No … Honestly, I don’t know.”

And that creates one more challenge for a player trying to live his dream in the NHL. Because you process information differently, it can change you as a player and as a person.

Klingberg grew up in Sweden but then tried the Finnish Elite League for one season in 2011-12. While the countries are neighbors, the languages are vastly different, and Klingberg struggled with Finnish.

“That was one of the hardest years, but more off the ice than on,” he said. “I’m a social person, so I like to talk a lot and have fun, and I really couldn’t do that there. I was a different person.”

Klingberg has good command of English but said his goal is to be fluent.

“I need work,” he said with a smile. “I want to be much better.”

Because, ultimately, it affects everything you do.

Former Stars defenseman Sergei Gonchar has two daughters and said he wants to raise them in a way that embraces their heritage, so they speak Russian at home. They have been raised in English schools, so he knows how difficult it is for them to learn to read and write in Russian, and he appreciates the challenges in juggling languages.

“I look at Val and I have to give him a lot of credit,” Gonchar said of Nichushkin, his former teammate who takes English lessons in the summer. “He understands much better, and now it’s just a matter of time before he’s comfortable speaking.”

Six languages are spoken among Stars players

At any point in time this season, the Stars could have six languages bouncing around the dressing room. Here are the players who have a history in a language other than English:

Russian: Valeri Nichushkin

Swedish: Anders Lindback, John Klingberg, Patrik Nemeth

Finnish: Kari Lehtonen, Jyrki Jokipakka

Czech: Ales Hemsky

French: Antoine Roussel

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