Would there be so much concern if Finland hadn't blown that bronze medal game yesterday? Finland's won medals in 6 out of the last 8 Winter Olympics (pro tournaments except the Gold they won in 2022). 2 Golds and 3 Silvers in the last 10 World Championships. 2 Golds, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze in the last 10 World Juniors. 2 of the Top 10 NHL players in scoring at the moment. From the outside, it looks like things are going pretty well.
Yes. Like i have already mentioned, there was a crisis meeting that took place in 2008 or 09, around that time anyway. Erkka Westerlund called the meeting and basically said that finnish hockey is going to shitter. Then they did some changes to junior coaching and the result was what you just listed.
But the problem is that we stopped evolving with the times, hockey evolves all the time and Finland is stucked to what they decided more than 15 years ago. Big problem is skating, even our most elite players biggest problem is skating. Except Heiskanen, but Heiskanen put lot of work in his skating.
Biggest problem along with skating is Liiga, the level of hockey has plummet. There is just too many teams(16 next season) and not enough quality players therefore not enough competition. And also there is no relegation round, the bottom tier teams can sell off most of the team and play the remaining games with 3 lines and 2 of them are filled with U20 players. Absolute mockery of competetive sport.
If there is no competition how can our players develop to high standart of todays hockey? People in this threat focus too much on past results, when the problem is the future. Our top prospects in up coming draft, what are their ceilings? Helenius 2C? Hemming middle-6 winger, most likely another Kapanen. Kiviharju will be a bust, most over hyped and overrated prospect in finnish history. Veeti Väisänen, next Jokiharju or Honka?
Finland winning a medal would have just made the Finnish ice hockey association to turn the blind eye on these problems. They have all the money and power to fix this mess, but last 2 years they have been more interested selling tickets to big corporations. Which totally ruined the atmosphere in B2B home tournaments. Compare the 2016 WJC tournament atmosphere, created by real hockey fans to the atmosphere created by the corporate clowns in 2022 & 2023.
Just look at these numbers....... blaming on the coaching staff is easy but only few coaches can turn shit to chocolate.
Still going back to skating, see just how fast paced game the gold medal game was. There is no way in hell Finland could have kept up with that. And our kids supposed to play in "pro league".
