Finnish offense falls flat in best-on-best transition year at World Cup

TORONTO – Team Finland was caught in a transition year at the World Cup of Hockey.

That was the simple explanation for why one of the most prolific hockey playing countries flamed out in the tournament without a win following their 3-0 loss to Team Russia on Thursday.

On the horizon for the Finns are a bevy of young players ready to take the international stage. But right now they’re simply too youthful to make a meaningful impact and take over for the aging veterans. This was why the Finns, a team that has medaled the last three Olympics and made it to the final of the last World Cup in 2004, finished 0-3-0 and were outscored 9-1 in this tournament.

“The last three games we lost to good teams so, they’re great teams and great players and I think they deserved the win but of course we battled hard but we didn’t score and that was the biggest difference,” Finnish forward Aleksander Barkov said. “Of course we have a lot of young guys on the team but it shouldn’t be a problem because we have a North American young team here, they’re all young guns, young guys and they’re playing well, so it doesn’t matter if you’re young or not.”

Finland’s struggles this tournament started against Team North America. They were blitzed 4-1 and then simply couldn’t recover from the mental toll that loss exacted upon them.

The game against Sweden was much more even, even though Finland didn’t score. But Team North America’s win over the Swedes the next day eliminated Finland and gave them little to play for Thursday other than national pride against Russia.

“The start was the biggest problem. I think how we started the first game, we couldn’t handle the young guys but the positive thing was how we responded after that against Sweden and obviously if you can’t score and it kind of gets in your head, it’s difficult to win,” Finnish goaltender Tuukka Rask said. “Sometimes you need that one goal to get with the lead and play with the lead to kind of open things up. We can do that and that’s it but I’m proud of how we responded after the first loss.”

Some hockey countries can just reload while others need to go through a lengthier process. For so long the success of Finnish NHL stars Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, Kimmo Timonen amongst others carried the country in hockey.

During this tournament, Selanne, Koivu and Timonen were all part of the Finnish national team management group that watched this squad from the press box in suits.

In fact, a lot of Finland’s future stars weren’t at the tournament. The only one of four Finns chosen in the first-round of the 2016 NHL Draft that took part in this tournament was Laine and he didn’t score a goal. It’s also easy to forget that Barkov, who is entering his fourth NHL season, is just 21 years old and still hasn’t hit his peak as a two-way talent.

The rest of the young Finns will have to wait for another ‘best-on-best’ tournament to try to help the country reclaim their spot as a hockey superpower.

“I think that this tournament is coming too fast for us, and what I said before is that, for example, next Olympics maybe it’s better timing for our team,” coach Lauri Marjamaki said. “But, of course, we had a good chance to succeed here, but you didn’t score, you can’t win. We have so much good scoring chances in both games, but of course that first game against young stars, they were so much better that I don’t know even with a top performance from us, I don’t know is it enough. We have to keep going and maybe analyze a little bit later, and just now a little bit disappointing.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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