The Finnish men’s hockey team won the Czech Republic’s 3–0 World Cup finals in the final round. Finland will face Slovakia in fourth place in Group A in the quarterfinals. The semi-finals will be played on Thursday.
24.5. 22:33 • Updated May 24 23:04
The Finnish men’s hockey national team won the opening round of the World Championships in their last match Kari Jalosen coached by the Czech Republic in goals 3-0.
With the victory, Finland won its block and will have Slovakia, which finished fourth in the B-block, in the semi-finals to be played on Thursday night.
The semi-finals of Finland and Slovakia will be played on Thursday at 8.20 pm.
The meeting between the two Finnish coaches was expected to be exciting and even. However, since the opening round, Finland has shown that it will not give the Czechs, who played loosely, the keys to victory.
The Czechs also fooled around, which led to several counterattacks in Finland. At another seven minutes, the Czech Republic survived in fright when Marko Anttila did not hit Saku Mäenalasen feed with two against one.
A few minutes later Harri Pesonen released Joel Armian to attack, and at the end of a magnificent individual performance, the Pori player mastered the top corner of the puck.
Finland struck in the opening round once more when Sakari Manninen got to finish at the end of a long spin of force Jere Sallinen from a button feed to an empty target on the puck.
Fascinated by a damp start, the Czech Republic started the second round strongly. The Czech Republic already scored in the opening minute, after which the game ran in Finland for more than five minutes. Among other things, Finland’s number one chain was drunk in its own territory for a long time.
After the start-up, Finland caught up with the game again and was in complete control of the field almost until the end of the batch. The third goal of the lions’ evening followed the formula of the opening round: Anttila did not succeed in his top place, but two minutes later the puck was found again in Ilves. Marek Langhamerin behind the back.
Once again, Langhamer was not given a chance. Mikael Seppälä found a wonderful way to the back pole with a swim Toni Rajalan, who scored their fourth goal in the tournament. The entry point was Seppälä’s first race.
In the final round, Finland won twice and the Czech Republic once again, but these did not produce additional goals. The Czech Republic did not achieve much, even by force majeure. The discouraged team created one situation, but the team did not score a goal.
With Finnish paint Jussi Olkinuora played the zero game. He rejected a total of 24 times.