Kari Heikkilä is a former Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 ice hockey player and current coach.

He played majority of his career in Ilves

Ilves

Ilves is a Finnish sports club nowadays mostly known for their youth work. The ice hockey team plays in the SM-liiga at the Tampereen jäähalli in Hakametsä...

, but had also stints in Sweden (Vita Hästen and Luleå HF

Luleå HF

Luleå Hockeyförening is an ice hockey club from Luleå, Sweden. Luleå is the most northern club in the league and has played in Elitserien constantly since the 1984-85 season. They have won the Swedish championships once, in 1996...

) and in Italy, where he ended his career in 1994.

After that he started coaching. In SM-liiga

SM-liiga

The SM-liiga is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. As of March 2008, it is ranked by the IIHF as the second strongest league in Europe. It was created in 1975 to replace the SM-sarja, which was fundamentally an amateur league. The SM-liiga is not directly overseen by the Finnish Ice...

 he has coached HPK

HPK

HPK is an ice hockey team in the SM-liiga. They play in Hämeenlinna, Finland at the Hämeenlinnan jäähalli. HPK was established in 1929. The full name of the club is HPK-Edustusjääkiekko Ry and the team is sometimes promoted as the "Hockey Playing Knights", with the logo representing a knight...

 in autumn 1997 before being sacked, as well as Kärpät

Kärpät

Oulun Kärpät is an ice hockey team in the SM-liiga based in Oulu, Finland. Their logo features a stoat ; "kärpät" is Finnish for stoats or ermines. The team has won five league championships .-History:...

 in 2001-04 and Blues

Espoo Blues

The Blues are an ice hockey team in the SM-liiga. They play in Espoo, Finland at the Barona Areena.-Team history:The club was established in February 1984 as Kiekko-Espoo and played their first season in 1984-1985 in the Finnish Second Division...

 in 2005-07. His won the championship with Kärpät in 2004 and got silver medal the year before.

He has also coached Lokomotiv Yaroslavl

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl

Hockey Club Lokomotiv , also known as Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, is a Russian professional ice hockey team based in Yaroslavl. The name of the team is derived from its owner, Russian Railways, the national railroad operator....

in Russia, with major success. In 2005 he coached them to bronze, in 2008 and 2009 to silver. On August 16, 2010 Kari Heikkilä signed three year contract with the Belarusian Ice Hockey Association.