Finland wins world juniors gold
Jack Hughes still had tears in his eyes Saturday night as he talked about losing the goldmedal game at the world junior hockey championship.
“Right now, there’s nothing I really want to learn from this,” the 17-year-old said after Finland beat the Americans 3-2 in a dramatic finals performance. “It’s sad. I don’t want to go through this again.”
Hughes is expected to go first overall at this year’s draft. Kaapo Kakko, who’s expected to go second, scored the gamewinning goal in the last minuteand-a-half of Saturday night’s game.
“It was a great feeling. There are no words,” the young Finn said through a translator. Kakko’s teammates gushed about his performance at the tournament and predicted that he’ll be the one picked first by an NHL team come June.
“I think he’s unbelievable. First tournament and he scores a goal like that? Unbelievable. It sums up his tournament, for sure,” said Finnish captain Aarne Talvitie. “He’s so young but he seems like a third-year veteran guy out there. He don’t fear anything,” said Eeli Tolvanen, who played four games with the Nashville Predators last month.
“He’s unbelievable. He’s going to be the first overall for sure.” Finnish coach Jussi Ahokas called the teenage forward “a future superstar,” but said his group won as a team on Saturday night. “We were really tight. We have great personalities on the team. We grew up as a team,” he said. The win was special for Ahokas, who’s been coaching some of the players for several years. He remembers being a skills coach for Talvitie when he was just nine years old.
“Kinda cool that he was here now,” the coach said.
“It’s been a long journey and we had such a great bunch of guys.”
The win marks Finland’s fifth gold at the tournament and comes after the team was eliminated from competition in the quarterfinals last year. They last won at home in Helsinki in 2016.