World junior flop not sitting well in Finland
Head coach, most of staff sacked as team becomes first defending champions not to reach quarter-finals
Jussi Ahokas got the phone call sometime on Friday night that he would be taking over coaching duties for Finland midway through the world junior hockey championship. His first thought? “I need to borrow skates (for practice),” he said. “Of course.”
That, if anything, tells you how surprising the coaching change was. Ahokas didn’t have skates, because he didn’t think he needed them. He was only in Montreal because he knew he would be coaching next year’s team and wanted to scout the players.
But then Finland lost 2-1 in overtime to the Czech Republic, was upset 3-2 to Denmark and lost 3-1 to Sweden. Following Switzerland’s come-from-behind win against Denmark on Friday, Finland officially became the first defending champions to fail to reach the quarter-finals and as a result fired head coach Jukka Rautakorpi and pretty much his entire staff.
“It’s always a bad thing when you have to fire a head coach,” said Ahokas, who enlisted the help of Finland’s goalie coach and the country’s under-17 coach, who had been helping out as a video coach, to coach Saturday’s game against Switzerland.
“You never want to jump into a situation like this. Of course, I would have liked our team to have played well and then I jump in (for next year). That would have been the best thing for me. But things happen and you move on.”
As abrupt as this move might have seemed, moving on as quickly as possible is important for Finland.
The Finns blanked Switzerland 2-0 on Saturday in their final round robin game, but a far more important two-out-of three relegation round series against Latvia awaits, where a berth in next year’s tournament is on the line.
Latvia, which is without a win after four games, should represent an easy opponent. Then again, so should have Denmark and the Czech Republic. That’s where the coaching change comes in. It’s not only a matter of saving face. It’s ensuring that this doesn’t get any worse and that there will still be a team to coach next year.
Even in a tournament full of upsets and surprises — last year Canada finished in sixth place — going from first to last is shocking. Finland isn’t the same team that dominated last year’s juniors, in large part because Jesse Puljujarvi, Sebastian Aho and Patrik Laine, who went 1-2-3 in scoring, are all playing in the NHL. But even without those players, this was still a very talented team.
Finnish captain Olli Juolevi, who was a tournament all-star last year, was selected fifth overall by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2016 NHL Draft. And as many as five players are projected first-round picks in the 2017 draft, including Eeli Tolvanen, who one scout described as a miniLaine because of his ability to score.
“Those guys are some of the best players right now in the NHL,” Juolevi had said of Puljujarvi, Aho and Laine. “It’s a big loss for any team, especially Finland. But we can’t do anything about that. They’re not here now, and we have to play with this team.”
So far, that hasn’t happened. Finland, which came into Saturday averaging a tournament-worst 1.3 goals per game, hasn’t been on the same page offensively. The team scored once against the Czech Republic, twice against Denmark and had one goal against Sweden before popping in two against the Swiss.
“We always should beat Denmark, or at least score more goals than two goals with those shots,” said Juolevi. “I don’t know. There are no excuses.”
The pressure of playing in the shadow of last year’s team seemed to be affecting Finland’s young team. They lack confidence. Worse than that, they appear to be letting criticisms get to them, with Tolvanen complaining, “Of course, it’s tough. It’s not easy for us. The whole country is giving s--t for us.”
Ahokas wants his players to forget what has transpired in the last week and just go out there and have fun and get back to playing the way they have in past tournaments.
“Hockey is a really big thing in Finland and that’s the bad thing about it,” said Ahokas. “It’s the same in Canada. If they don’t succeed, the same kind of hunt is going on right away. You never want that for a 17-year-old boy.”