Finns live up to golden expectations
Underdogs against the Americans, team steps up its game to capture the world juniors title
They struggled to find something, anything, during the round robin, and for the bulk of the World Junior Championship, Finland looked like a team of overhyped underachievers.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Saturday night. Round about the time Eeli Tolvanen’s centring pass ricocheted off Aleksi Heponiemi’s ankle, up the stick of Canadian goalie Mike DiPietro and into the net, the Finns found that thing.
Saturday night, they also found gold medals hanging around their necks with their third WJC championship in six years, courtesy of a rockstar goaltending performance from Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and a last-minute goal by forward Kaapo Kakko.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Luukkonen, the Buffalo Sabres’ second-rounder from 2017. “Of course every team that comes here comes to win the gold medal. I know we had our ups and downs in the tournament, but in the end we got the gold medal and that’s all we can ask for.
“I think we were the better team the whole game. We kind of lost it for a bit in the third. But I was confident in our team. We showed we were the best team in the tournament.”
The gold medal says as much.
In an epic final to the 2019 tournament, Luukkonen out-duelled his American counterpart Cayden Primeau, stopping 25 of 27 shots, 24 of which seemed to be clean scoring chances. He saved his best work for the American power play, shutting down the U.S. on all five man-advantage opportunities.
He also turned away American star Jack Hughes on a breakaway when the score was tied late in the third.
Luukkonen was asked if he was in the zone goalies talk about.
“It felt like that,” he said. Looked like that, too. “Going into this game we had the best power play and if you watch film of this game, it’s not like we couldn’t do anything,” said American centre Ryan Poehling. “Their goalie just played really well against us. We would have done the same thing if we would have played them again.”
Through the first half of the game, Luukkonen and Primeau were locked in a scoreless draw. Jesse Ylonen gave the Finns a 1-0 lead when he blew a one-timer past the American goalie.
Defenceman Otto Latvala then gave the Finns a 2-0 lead six minutes into the third period when his seeing-eye wrister beat Primeau, before the Americans tied the game with goals a minute apart by Sasha Chmelevski and Josh Norris.
That set the stage for Kakko’s golden goal that will be remembered in his country for a generation.
“It’s a great feeling,” said Kakko. “There are no words.”
Well, there were a few for the Americans.
“The most frustrating part is you try to do everything right, and I thought we did for the most part,” said Poehling. “But sometimes it just doesn’t go your way. That’s hockey. I don’t know. It just sucks.”
“At the end of the day it’s about who stops the puck more and we didn’t get that on our side,” said Primeau. “That’s why we came up short.”
Saturday’s win ended a long, strange journey for Finland, which started the round robin with a tepid 2-1 loss to Sweden in Victoria on Boxing Day. Despite a lineup featuring four NHL first-rounders, three of whom have played in the NHL this season, three second-rounders and Kakko, they struggled to produce offence and were drilled 4-1 by the U.S., on New Year’s Eve, their last game of the round robin.
That loss sent them to Vancouver and a matchup with the host Canadian side in the quarterfinals. With under a minute left in regulation, the Finns were trailing 1-0 before Heponiemi was credited with the Plinko goal that sent the game into overtime. Defenceman Toni Utunen, a Canucks draft pick who hadn’t scored a goal in 21 games with Tappara in the Finnish Elite League, then beat DiPietro in overtime.
And, suddenly, it was a bright new day for the Finns.
“Before the Canada game, we realized it’s a whole new tournament now and it doesn’t matter how we played before,” said Luukkonen. “There’s nothing we have to think about now other than what’s ahead of us.”
ICE CHIPS: The goldmedal game also reflected the shifting balance of power at the WJC. In the 28 tournaments between 1982 and 2009, Canada and Russia/the Soviet Union/the CIS combined to win 24 golds. Since 2010, Finland and the U.S. have both won three, Canada two and Russia one.
The most frustrating part is you try to do everything right, and I thought we did for the most part.” Ryan Poehling