Finland’s opening 5-2 loss to the defending Olympic champion Americans didn’t lay the best groundwork for confronting Canada on Saturday. If the Finnish women aspire to do more than hopefully repeat the bronze medal they captured at the 2018 Winter Games and the 2021 IIHF Ice Women’s World Championship, they need to get their offence clicking and not get outshot 52-12 again.

“In the first and second period, we weren’t really there,” said Finnish captain Jenni Hiirikoski. “We didn’t win enough battles and loose pucks. But we came back in the third period and we improved our game.”

That might be a generous assessment, given that third-period shots favoured the U.S. 19-5. Still, the Finns need to maintain an optimistic outlook in Beijing, despite some topsy-turvy circumstances.

In the latest development, Finland announced on Friday that head coach Pasi Mustonen, who has led the team since 2014-15, would return home due to health concerns in his family and be replaced by his assistant Juuso Toivola, who was slated to become head coach after these Olympics.

Dating back to 2017, the Finns upset Canada twice in their last six IIHF encounters, including both Olympic and Women’s Worlds play. That includes a 4-3 group-stage win at the 2017 Women’s Worlds in Plymouth on Ronja Savolainen’s late goal and a 4-2 semi-final win at the 2019 Women’s Worlds in Espoo, where Savolainen again stepped up with two goals and an assist.

At the 2022 Olympics, Canada-Finland might be the single most likely group-stage game to produce a legitimate upset. No other women’s hockey nation can challenge the North American superpowers like Finland can.

Conversely, more recent history offers a cold shower of reality. Not only did the Canadians – the defending Women’s Worlds champions from the 2021 tournament in Calgary – just stomp Switzerland 12-1, but they also convincingly swept the Finns in a three-game exhibition series in Helsinki and Turku in November (4-2, 8-0, 5-1).

Against Canada or the U.S., the Finns are unlikely to win unless they concede two or fewer goals. Most famously, they came within a video review of knocking off the Americans in the 2019 Women’s Worlds final, although Petra Nieminen’s 2-1 sudden-death winner was controversially disallowed, and Finland lost in a shootout.

In Beijing, everyone is scrutinizing Finland’s goaltending after Mustonen’s surprising decision to leave four-time Olympian Noora Raty off the roster. Realistically speaking, against the U.S., Anni Keisala – named Best Goalie and a tournament all-star at the last Worlds – turned in a 47-save performance that compared favourably with the last time Raty faced the Americans in Olympic play (33 saves in 2018’s 5-0 semi-final loss).

Still, it wasn’t Keisala’s best outing. In the first period, the 24-year-old Ilves netminder looked caught off guard when Amanda Kessel cut to the net to open the scoring and when Alex Carpenter’s 2-0 power-play goal beat her short side less than two minutes later, even though she got little defensive support. However, U.S. captain Kendall Coyne Schofield’s two goals and Carpenter’s in-tight deflection to make it 5-1 were fantastic plays that Keisala had little chance on. You couldn’t pin this loss on the goalie.

“Obviously there’s room for improvement, but I think that we worked hard and tried to execute what we talked about,” said defender Minttu Tuominen, playing in her fourth Olympics.

Offensively, Finland’s biggest positive was getting two third-period power play goals from Susanna Tapani, even if it was too little, too late. But they still need more out of Michelle Karvinen, who has not scored a goal in IIHF competition since 2019’s 3-1 quarter-final win over the Czechs. The top line of Tapani, Karvinen, and Petra Nieminen needs more secondary support overall, even if the power play stays hot. That line provided seven of Finland’s 12 shots in the opener.

Discipline-wise, Savolainen will need to watch her step after Thursday’s game. After missing a scoring chance, the talented, aggressive 24-year-old defender tripped up superstar Brianna Decker with her left leg behind the net, and the three-time U.S. Olympian was stretchered off with a lower-body injury. Decker will miss the rest of the Olympics.

Savolainen has been a magnet for these kinds of incidents in recent IIHF history, on both the delivering and receiving ends.

In the 2018 semi-final, then-U.S. captain Meghan Duggan nailed the Finn with an outstretched knee in the first period and she hobbled off, although she would return in the middle frame. In the 2019 semi-final, Savolainen shoved Blayre Turnbull from behind into the boards, and the Canadian not only went off, but also missed the 7-0 bronze-medal win over Russia. Oddly, no penalties or suspensions were incurred in any of these cases.

Seemingly, the Finns sagged and the U.S. surged after hearing Decker’s cries of pain. For NHL fans, it was reminiscent momentum-wise of the way the Boston Bruins reacted after Vancouver Canucks defenceman Aaron Rome’s open-ice hit that knocked Nathan Horton out of the 2011 Stanley Cup final. The Finns must show greater resilience.

Team Canada, of course, could face a significant injury problem of its own. Melodie Daoust, the 2021 Women’s Worlds MVP and scoring leader (12 points), left the opener mid-game and did not return after taking a hard illegal hit from Switzerland’s Sarah Forster. 

Yet Canada has so much depth that – with or without Daoust – a Finnish upset on Saturday still seems improbable. For example, look at the remarkable composure of its Olympic rookie “Princeton pair,” 21-year-old forward Sarah Fillier and 24-year-old defender Sarah Thompson.

They may not be as famous as fellow Princeton alumni like Jeff Bezos and Michelle Obama, but Fillier made her mark early with Canada’s first two goals against Switzerland, and Thompson racked up a whopping five points.

Star blueliner Renata Fast hailed Fillier’s debut: “Talk about making an entrance to the Olympics. To score on her first shift, to bat the puck out of the air, that is so skilful.”

“I circled out in front and the seas just seemed to part and I took my shot,” Fillier said of her second goal, set up by captain Marie-Philip Poulin. Fillier is already being projected as Poulin’s heir.

Veteran leaders like Natalie Spooner (2+3=5), Rebecca Johnston (1+3=4), and Blayre Turnbull (2+2=4) also dazzled with big nights. Canada was truly firing on all cylinders as it outshot Switzerland 70-15.

Finland’s best hope of pulling off a Group A upset here is if Canada lulls itself into a false sense of security. That seems unlikely for coach Troy Ryan’s relentless crew. But the honest truth is that no coach wants to win 12-1 from a psychological standpoint. If the Swiss had pushed back harder on Day One, with Canada playing just as well, and, say, kept the score to 5-1, it would naturally inspire a greater sense of urgency going forward.

The Finns couldn’t defeat Canada in their last official meeting at the 2021 Women’s Worlds, but Suomi put two early pucks past goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens before falling 5-3. No other country – apart from the Americans in the final – ever managed to lead Canada in that tournament.

Little crumbs of hope like that will have to sustain the Finns as they face a Canadian squad that looks far more energized than the one they upset in the 2019 Women’s Worlds semi-finals.

Source: iihf.com