Sakari Manninen seemed to have found some extra time when he scored the winning goal in the semi-finals, writes Jussi Paasi.
The escape day is familiar to everyone, but the escape second is less familiar to many.
The second of escape is added from time to time so that the rotation of the earth and the time of the earth run at the same rate. This was the case, for example, at the turn of the year 2016–17.
Defender Petteri Lindbohm first introduced the elegant movements with the blue line and fired the puck towards the Slovakian goal. Manninen managed to direct the shot from Lindbohm to the air, but the goalkeeper from Slovakia Patrik Rybar got in the way of the puck. However, Manninen grabbed the loose disc for himself.
Then came the time of a second.
The rackets of the Slovak players reached for the puck, but Manninen was in no hurry to do anything. He was in no hurry. Did not leave to knock the puck from the knuckle towards the goal.
Manninen stopped. Manninen waited. The Finnish striker stole enough time for Rybar to raise his other leg to block the upcoming shot. Manninen then threw the puck under the mattress of the veskari in a cold-cool finish.
Few hockey players at that location would have been able to perform similarly. After the Lindbohm shot, the game clock rotated for only three seconds until the puck was in the finish. Manninen seemed to have found some extra time.
The scene was the perfect learning material for hockey. Every junior jerk, especially a defender, should take a close look at what Lindbohm did with the blue line with the puck. Without those movements, Manninen’s goal would never have been achieved.
And everyone – whether you play or not – should watch many times how Manninen managed to work in such a place with the same lingering serenity as when he drank his morning coffee on Sunday.
After a second of ice hockey conjured by Manninen, everything looked really good for Finland. In the opening round, the game was completely in the hands of the Lions.
From the second installment onwards, those ordinary seconds of the game clock then seemed gruelingly long from Finland’s point of view. The lions had to splash and hit the long discs repeatedly as Slovakia pushed wildly over.
Only when Harri Pesonen hit the puck to an empty Slovakian goal in the last minute of the match, the seconds had returned to the Lions side. Slovakia’s struggle against time pushed for it.