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Hei,
Welcome to your coverage of Team Finland for the World Cup of Coffee. Since we're getting a late start, I'll quickly cover the preliminary games, talk about the roster and catch up on any news. After that, I'll try to provide some consistent coverage as the tournament progesses.
Prelims
Thursday Sept 8th vs Sweden : Win 3-2 (OT)
Saturday Sept 10th vs Sweden: Loss 6-3
Tomorrow vs USA
Group B w/ Russia, North America, and Sweden.
Round Robin:
Open the Tournament Sunday September 18th vs North America
Tuesday Sept 20th vs Sweden
Thursday Sept 22 vs Russia
As you can see, this team has its work cut out for them to advance far into this tournament. They managed a split with Sweden in the their back-to-back prelim games, however, the Swedish team is a close co-favorite to Canada, Russia is Russia and the North Americans can absolutely fly.
Only two teams from each group will advance beyond the first three games into the knockout round, and Finland certainly has their work cut out to be one of those teams.
Basically, barring one of the biggest disappointments in Swedish history since it was revealed that Steig Larsson was in fact just the pen name of an Ikea Dresser set come to life, the Swedes are going to be one of the two teams that make it.
That means that only one of the Russian, Fins or North American teams will be in the elimination round. As an aside, the groupings of the tournament look suspiciously like they were set up to make the probabilities of a Canada/USA/Russia/Sweden Final Four very high.
What might not have been counted on: the USA trolling the tournament with a joke team.
Anyways, the Fins are in tough to advance, but the Russian defense is suspect and their tendency to insist on KHL players could put them at a disadvantage. The North American's may be fast, but they are also very green and so it's not impossible that the Fins upset their way to knockout round.
Having already beaten Sweden once, they should at least have some high confidence entering the Round Robin.
The Roster
19 G Mikko Koskinen
40 G Tuukka Rask
35 G Pekka Rinne
2 D Jyrki Jokipakka
18 D Sami Lepistö
7 D Esa Lindell
3 D Olli Määttä
22 D Ville Pokka
55 D Rasmus Ristolainen
45 D Sami Vatanen
20 LW Sebastian Aho
91 C Aleksander Barkov
27 LW Joonas Donskoi
51 C Valtteri Filppula (A)
56 RW Erik Haula
36 LW Jussi Jokinen (A)
9 C Mikko Koivu (C)
71 RW Leo Komarov
28 LW Lauri Korpikoski
29 RW Patrik Laine
12 C Jori Lehterä
86 C Teuvo Teräväinen
This roster is OK. Certainly it doesn't strike fear into the hearts of any of the other teams, however, if they get good goaltending they should be able to make use of their excellent set of defensive forwards to shut down better teams.
It's not the sexiest roster you've ever seen, but there is a lot to like:
Patrik Laine: Other than Auston Matthews, is there a more interesting thing about this tourny than seeing how Laine stacks up against NHL competition? I don't think there is.
Lucky for the Fins that Laine isn't forced to play for Team Europe like Matthews and McDavid were forced onto Team North America.
Teravainen, Komarov, Koivu, Granlund and Houla are some of the best defensive forwards in the world and should make the Fins hard to play against, if they can score enough to get a lead. If there is one thing the Fins excel at, it's developing defensively aware players who play multi-faceted all-round games.
Barkov, Laine and Lehtera will have their work cut out for them because unlike most of the other teams, the Fins lack pure offensive firepower across multiple lines.
The goaltending is fine, as long as Rask plays.
But that defense........oh boy. While their greatest rival produces defenseman like doing so is as easy as building a supreme ice-country north of the 60th latitude, the Fins, for whatever reason, are not so lucky.
Their best defenseman is.......probably Sami Vatenen. But no one on the Finnish defense is likely to have made even Team North America, so that is going to be a problem. However, they can move the puck and chip in some offense, and, well anything can happen!
But the defense is definitely their weak point.
Even if the Fins don't do well in this tournament, my adopted country and I can take solace in the fact that we have the least corrupt government in the world and close to 100% literacy.
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