Excerpts from Pro Hockey, WHA 1976-77 (by Dan Proudfoot)
Adapting to professional hockey was more difficult for Laurie Mononen, who's a right winger, than it was for his Finnish National teammate Pekka Rautakallio, who's a defenseman.
"That's because the Finnish forwards' style is so different from what Canadians and Americans are used to," says Al Rollins, the Roadrunners' manager-coach. "It's practically impossible to find line-mates to complement a guy like Laurie. And you don't want to change the Finns to make them fit our style. Do that and you might as well not bother bringing them over here. So what we did is get Juhani Tamminen from the Cleveland-Florida franchise and sign Seppo Repo, an outstanding center from Finland. That gives us a complete Finnish forward line — and watch them fly. They'll have plenty of speed, and I can hardly wait to play them against the Jets' line of Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson.