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Can Finland Play the Spoiler?

September 22, 2016, 11:41 AM ET [36 Comments]
Tanner: Team Finland
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In just a few hours, Finland and Russia will face off for the final game of the Round-Robin portion of the World Cup.

While the Finns were eliminated yesterday when the North Americans beat Sweden in over-time, they can still play a big role in this tournament by beating Russia and ensuring that NA goes to the medal round.

Obviously, this is disappointing to Finland, but when you dress a roster full of NHL replacement players and guys not in the league anymore, you can't really be expecting to do anything significant.

The one chance the Finns had was to ride a hot goalie as far as possible, and they all but shot themselves in the foot on that account by dressing Rinne over Rask, despite Rinne ranking about 50th over the last three years in overall goalie stats.




The NHL is a league with only 30 starting goalies at any given time, so that should make clear that Pikke Rinne is a bad goalie. Not an average goalie, not a guy in a bit of a decline. A bad goalie.

Not starting Rask basically ruined any chance Finland had of advancing and ranks right along the USA leaving off Kessel, Yandle, Johnson, Statsny, Ryan or Faulk, the USA using Torterella as coach and the USA not dressing Corey Schneider.

So basically, it was the worst move made by any team that we can reasonably suggest knew what it was doing.



(She's pretty annoying, but learning about Finland is Fun!! )

As for today's game, I hope Finland wins because I think this Tournament loses about 99% of its appeal if NA goes out. Unfortunately, when one team has their back against the wall and the other team is wasting one of their last days of holidays, the odds aren't great.

In the end, the Finns can be happy about how they played. They had no chance against NA because their goalie was total garbage, and they easily could have beaten Sweden if they got a couple of bounces.

Their roster just isn't up to par with Canada, North America or Sweden. Had they been in the Group A where USA and the Czechs play, they'd probably be going to the medal round. All in all, I would say when your coaching decisions are costing you games and you're getting by with Lepisto on defense, you couldn't have played that bad.

Ultimately, Finland will be seen as a disappointment at this tournament, however I think their level of competitiveness relative to their roster strength was actually very impressive.
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