The two-time World Champion and four-time Finnish Champion Joonas Pylsy has decided to retire from top-level floorball. Now 33-year-old Pylsy had to drop out from WFC 2022 due to stroke.
— I have been struggling with this for a long time, and now the time has come. After careful and thoughtful consideration, I am announcing my immediate retirement from top-level floorball. I have to put my health and my family first, Joonas Pylsy sums up the situation.
— On 8th November 2022, my sporting life came to a complete end. I had a stroke, was in intensive care for several days, two weeks in hospital and another three weeks in rehabilitation. I got a new life, I got up. I fought my way back into the light. At the moment life is like before the stroke, without symptoms, I am lucky. But it left an everlasting scar on my life. I’m not the same as I was before, and I have to accept that.
Still living in Switzerland, Pylsy has played in the Swiss top league first with Tigers Langnau (2014-2016) and since 2019 with the country’s most successful club SV Wiler-Ersigen, where last season brought the club’s 13th national championship title.
— My contract with the club runs until the end of the season, and we have agreed that after I leave the top sporting side of the club, I will continue to coach the junior side for the rest of the season. Our eldest son is at school here, and in the spring it will be time to decide whether to stay on or return home. It’s time to start planning a new career, and that will probably be in the financial sector, says Pylsy, who has a Master’s degree in economics.
Joonas Pylsy has played in the Finnish league from 2009 to 2019, first five seasons with Happee and then three seasons with Classic. In 191 regular season games he has scored 123 goals and 123 assists, in the play-offs he has scored 48+42 in 65 games. Pylsy won the Finnish Championship with Happee in 2014 and with Classic in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Pylsy also won the Floorball Champions Cup with Classic in 2019.
Pylsy has played a total of 71 matches for the Finnish men’s national team between 2014 and 2023, scoring 47 goals and 35 assists. He has won the World Championships in 2016 in Riga and 2018 in Prague as well as World Championship silver in 2021 and bronze in 2022. Pylsy was named to the World Championships All-Star Team in 2018.
— The highlights have probably been the second World Championships in 2018 and the invitation to the Independence Day Reception. I think quite a few people have been invited to the Presidential Palace through floorball, Pylsy recalls.
— And an important honour was to captain the national team in five matches. I myself have had a slightly different career path in the sport, as I was never the most talented player when I was young and only played a few junior matches. As a late bloomer like me, I have worked hard and with passion for the sport, I have still made it to the top.
Source: Finnish Floorball Federation
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