Krista Parkkonen

Krista Parkkonen (born 25 June 2002) is a Finnish ice hockey player and member of the Finnish national team, currently playing with the Minnesota Golden Gophers women's ice hockey program in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) conference of the NCAA Division I.

Playing career
Parkkonen first played ice hockey at age 4 or 5, participating in a youth hockey school in her hometown of Lappeenranta, a city in South Karelia situated 30 km from the Russian border. She played on girls' teams for a few years. Early on, she set her sights on playing for the national team and having a college ice hockey career in the United States, which prompted her to switch to playing with the boys' teams for her age group in the junior ice hockey department of SaiPa. At age fifteen, she made her debut with SaiPa Naiset, the club's representative women's team in the third-tier Naisten Suomi-sarja but, as the women's team was not very competitive, she continued to spend most of her time playing on the boys' junior teams.

After turning seventeen and becoming ineligible to play in boys' leagues any longer, Parkkonen was recruited to play for newly-created women's team HIFK Naiset by general manager and head coach Saara Niemi.

International play
Parkkonen represented Finland at the IIHF Women's World Championships in 2022 and 2023. She was named to The Hockey News' Top-35 U-23 Players in Women's Hockey in September 2022.

International
Sources: