Finland National Women’s Hockey Team – Page 2

Once again, Sarah Fillier lit the fire and her Canadian teammates stoked the blaze. In an 11-1 rout of Finland, the preternaturally gifted 21-year-old Olympic rookie set the early tone with two goals, as she did in the 12-1 shellacking of Switzerland.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this opportunity and I’ve been putting in the work as well as the rest of the girls,” Fillier said. “So putting in two goals today and two goals the other game is good for my confidence and good for the team.”

It was easily Canada’s most lopsided Olympic win over Finland ever. The previous high was a 6-0 win in 2006. There was simply no stopping the red Maple Leaf on Saturday, and right now, there is no doubt that the defending World Champions are favoured to win another gold medal in Beijing.

Sarah Nurse and Brianne Jenner both notched hat tricks at the Wukesong Sports Centre, and Natalie Spooner had four assists to take sole possession of the Olympic scoring lead with nine points.

Brianne Jenner and Laura Stacey each scored twice, and Jamie Lee Rattray added a single. Captain Marie-Philip Poulin had three helpers.

Melodie Daoust, the MVP and leading scorer of the 2021 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship, missed this game with an upper-body injury she suffered versus the Swiss. The 2014 Olympic gold medalist is being evaluated day to day and may return later in the tournament. The Canadians didn’t miss a beat as Rattray took Daoust’s place on the line with Fillier and Spooner.

Any way you slice it, this was an extremely disappointing performance by the Finns, who won bronze at both the last Olympics and last Women’s Worlds. Typically, they keep it closer against Canada.

Veteran Minttu Tuominen, who scored Finland’s lone goal, said wryly: “I was there on the ice probably when they scored seven goals, so it doesn’t really matter if I scored one.”

The Finns upset Canada 4-2 in the 2019 Women’s Worlds semi-finals, the last time they faced each other in IIHF playoff competition. But times have changed. Coach Troy Ryan’s team outshot Finland 48-29.

“We’ve gotten to play them a few times this year and have kinda learned what’s working for us,” Spooner said. “Today, we just stuck with the game plan and were able to get on them early again and then just keep building throughout the game and create a lot of offence.”

It was a different-looking Finnish team than the one that lost 5-2 to the Americans in their Beijing opener on Thursday. Assistant coach Juuso Toivola took over from Pasi Mustonen as head coach, since Mustonen had to return to Finland due to health concerns in his family. Winger Viivi Vainikka, 20, slotted in to make her Olympic debut. Juggling the lineup, Toivola remarkably put 16-year-old forward Sanni Vanhanen on defence.

Veteran Finnish goalie Meeri Raisanen had a rough run in her very first Olympic start at age 32. Raisanen, named the Naisten Liiga’s best goalie three times, was a member of Finland’s Olympic bronze medal teams in 2014 and 2018 but didn’t get to play. The way this game went raises more questions about the decision to not bring superstar netminder Noora Raty to these Olympics.

“We were as ready as we could have been,” Toivola said. “There are many things going on, but we’ll get through it and next game will be much better. Canada was really strong today and we really weren’t good enough. We really just have to forget about this game and move on to the next one [versus Switzerland on Monday].”

With 28 saves, Canadian netminder Ann-Renee Desbiens won her second straight start after making 14 saves versus Switzerland.

Of facing the ROC team on Monday and the defending Olympic champion U.S. on Tuesday, Spooner said: “Every game, we just wanna keep building and trying to play our game and not play to our opponents’ game. If we can just keep improving, we set ourselves up good for when we get to that U.S. game, then the quarters, semis and finals.”

Against Finland, Canada came out with strong pressure and it paid off. In the offensive zone, they dominated their opponents below the goal line. They also found ways to capitalize on the rush. The Finns ran out of gas as the game wore on.

As against Switzerland, Fillier drew first blood just over a minute in. A forechecking Spooner grabbed the puck below the goal line and backhanded it to the Princeton captain, who lifted one home from the right faceoff circle. It was Canada’s first shot on goal.

“She’s got an amazing shot, so if I can ever get the puck on her stick and let her shoot it, most of the time it’s gonna go in,” Spooner said.

“I have a front row seat to greatness everyday,” Rattray said of Fillier. “Like, I can’t even! First shift again. You can’t even draw that up in a story. So it’s pretty impressive what she’s doing.”

Raisanen robbed Jenner in close near the eight-minute mark. She also stoned Blayre Turnbull on a shorthanded rush a couple of minutes later. But the Canadians just kept coming.

At 12:45, Nurse made it 2-0. In the Finnish zone, she picked off an ill-advised backhanded pass into the middle by defender Sanni Rantala and unleashed a wicked shot past Raisanen’s glove side.

Tuominen cut the deficit to 2-1 with a seeing-eye wrister from the left point. The four-time Olympian’s shot dinged in off the cross bar through traffic at 18:27. But it wouldn’t mean much.

In a show of pure skill, Fillier worked a give-and-go with Renata Fast to put Canada up 3-1 at 3:22 of the second period. Fillier busted to the net and, while, gliding backwards, picked up Fast’s centering pass that bounced off Vanhanen’s skate and golfed a backhander high to the stick side.

Nurse got her second of the game on a high-tempo rush. Rattray sent the puck across the Finnish zone and Spooner got it back to Nurse, who beat Raisanen high to the glove again. It was the former Toronto Furies’ star’s third career Olympic goal. She also tallied in a 2-1 group-stage win over the U.S. in 2018.

Ryan hailed Nurse’s resilience: “She overcame a bit of an injury this year and all the work she’s put in, as well as our medical staff, sets her up for success. If you look at the goals she’s scoring, they’re all by good positioning, forcing turnovers and then transitioning quick.”

Only 19 seconds later, Jenner put the game out of reach at 5-1. Off the centre-ice faceoff, she took a long pass from Jocelyne Larocque, crossed the blueline, and used Finnish captain Jenni Hiirikoski as a screen to fool Raisanen. Jenner’s second goal came on a lucky bounce just over three minutes later as she flung the puck toward the net.

“In the second period, I think our offence started to come more and we were able to find those open spots and bury some pucks on their goalie,” Spooner said.

Stacey, whom Raisanen had denied earlier on a partial breakaway, made it 7-1 when her attempted centering pass bounced in off Hiirikoski’s skate at 16:35.

Toivola mercifully replaced Raisanen with Anni Keisala, named Best Goalie at the 2021 Women’s Worlds, to start the third period. But Rattray showed no mercy when she cut in off right wing and roofed a nasty backhander short side for an 8-1 lead.

“I think our focus was really good at the beginning of the game,” Toivola said. “But they kept scoring and scoring and when that happens, it becomes really difficult to keep that focus.”

Nurse completed her hat trick on a nice passing play from Spooner and Erin Ambrose at 13:07. With under six minutes to play, Jenner and Stacey rounded out the scoring with goals 35 seconds apart.

Asked about areas where Finland needs to improve, Tuominen said: “Definitely our one-on-ones, our D-zone coverage. We also had a couple of chances and we should score on those.”

Canada now boasts a perfect record of seven Olympic wins and an all-time goal difference of 40-7 versus Finland, dating back to 1998.

Source: iihf.com

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