WC: 2021 Finland Roster Talk

ijuka

Registered User
May 14, 2016
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See you soon Finland... That's going to be a brutal match. I think it's an even quarter and could go either way with these rosters.

You are defending Gold medalists and have tonnes of Sisu.
Technically, could go either way I guess. But Finland's only defeated Czechia once in playoffs, ever. The record has to be like 1-10, though I'm too lazy to check. Brutal matchup.
 

Czechboy

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Technically, could go either way I guess. But Finland's only defeated Czechia once in playoffs, ever. The record has to be like 1-10, though I'm too lazy to check. Brutal matchup.
Sounds wrong to me.. Finns have been better than us for a decade at all levels. Also too lazy to check.lol
 

moropanov

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Mar 7, 2015
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That is an anamoly if true! I do remember Jagr scoring on Rinne in the quarters as that was huge for us.
Hmm Finland has won Czech also 98 semifinals and Olympics 010 quarterfinals, still Czech have usually won. Tight close games usually.
 

ijuka

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May 14, 2016
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Hmm Finland has won Czech also 98 semifinals and Olympics 010 quarterfinals, still Czech have usually won. Tight close games usually.
These aren't Olympics.

I guess 1998 is true yeah but that one was weird, not very relevant. I mean one and done playoff games.
 

Mestaruus

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Apr 11, 2011
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See you soon Finland... That's going to be a brutal match. I think it's an even quarter and could go either way with these rosters.

You are defending Gold medalists and have tonnes of Sisu.

You have the roster advantage, but maybe we have little bit better coaching. It's like a coinflip. LAT-GER game will show if we play in your arena or in our's. That's a little factor as well.
 

Czechboy

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You have the roster advantage, but maybe we have little bit better coaching. It's like a coinflip. LAT-GER game will show if we play in your arena or in our's. That's a little factor as well.
I think you got your arena.

Systems and coaching are definitely superior (eg. I like our coach but the Czechs have chaos all the way up to the adult level while Finns clearly are doing things very well from youth to adult). So is skating (although we have some burners on this team, we also have a few guys that are definitely not footspeed champions).

Agreed, coinflip. I don't see a blowout coming either way.. more like a heartbreaking OTL for one of us.
 

Old Man Jags

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Mar 25, 2006
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I think you got your arena.

Systems and coaching are definitely superior (eg. I like our coach but the Czechs have chaos all the way up to the adult level while Finns clearly are doing things very well from youth to adult). So is skating (although we have some burners on this team, we also have a few guys that are definitely not footspeed champions).

Agreed, coinflip. I don't see a blowout coming either way.. more like a heartbreaking OTL for one of us.

Tough matchup for us Czechs. Coin flip, as others have said. I am feeling a bit underwhelmed about our team this tournament, and the coach. I am not as negative as some other Czech fans this year - despite what it sometimes looked like, we seem to forget that we did win 5 out of 7 games, and only lost to Russia 19 seconds before the end, having come back from a goal down three times. The only totally catastrophic performance was against Switzerland. That said, our coaching is not brilliant, both keepers have been OK but no better than that, sometimes we are static and seem to play with heavy legs, and against Denmark in particular it looked like the side lacked togetherness, they kept trying to engage in individual actions while not helping each other enough. We have many players who have little or no prior experience playing at the world championships, and I am not convinced that the knock-out phase will necessarily bring out the best in them. Also, many players keep repeating the same mistakes and commit unnecessary fouls - not a good thing when your PK is one of the worst of all teams at the tournament. But you never know - I think in the context of the two teams' performances so far, the Finns are slight favourites, but we might sneak a win anyway, let's see what happens.
 
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Czechboy

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Tough matchup for us Czechs. Coin flip, as others have said. I am feeling a bit underwhelmed about our team this tournament, and the coach. I am not as negative as some other Czech fans this year - despite what it sometimes looked like, we seem to forget that we did win 5 out of 7 games, and only lost to Russia 19 seconds before the end, having come back from a goal down three times. The only totally catastrophic performance was against Switzerland. That said, our coaching is not brilliant, both keepers have been OK but no better than that, sometimes we are static and seem to play with heavy legs, and against Denmark in particular it looked like the side lacked togetherness, they kept trying to engage in individual actions while not helping each other enough. We have many players who have little or no prior experience playing at the world championships, and I am not convinced that the knock-out phase will necessarily bring out the best in them. Also, many players keep repeating the same mistakes and commit unnecessary fouls - not a good thing when your PK is one of the worst of all teams at the tournament. But you never know - I think in the context of the two teams' performances so far, the Finns are slight favourites, but we might sneak a win anyway, let's see what happens.
I agree with everything you wrote! Great summary.
 

Old Man Jags

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I agree with everything you wrote! Great summary.

Thank you! What do you think the win against Slovakia will do for the team's morale (if anything)? I know we rested some key players (as did the Slovaks) and the game really had no more of a status than that of a friendly (the US and Finland are both strong so even wanting to win to get to play one team as opposed the other would not have been much motivation (despite our poor record against the US in quarter finals..)). Obviously you always want to win and enjoy beating a friendly rival like Slovakia, but the team also looked much more like a cohesive unit than before, they were skating for each other more... hard to say to what extent Slovakia's weakness and that very quick goal contributed to it though. So i don't want to overestimate it, but I read some interviews in the Czech press today where players were saying it had a real positive impact psychologically on them. Let's hope that they can carry it into the difficult Finland game.
 

Lartsaman

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Aug 2, 2018
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Finland
Sounds wrong to me.. Finns have been better than us for a decade at all levels. Also too lazy to check.lol

2010s have been one sided. Finland won semifinal 2014. We lost at quarters against czechs in 2010 and 2015(Jagr...), bronze medal game 2012 and two times at round robin 2017 and 2011.

And some older finnish fans remember the final games in 1999 and 2001. Odds are heavily on Czech Republic on this one but theres allways a chance to make a difference. :) Overtimes and penalty shootouts against you have usually been a death penalty for us.
 
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mattihp

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Aug 2, 2004
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2010s have been one sided. Finland won semifinal 2014. We lost at quarters against czechs in 2010 and 2015(Jagr...), bronze medal game 2012 and two times at round robin 2017 and 2011.

And some older finnish fans remember the final games in 1999 and 2001. Odds are heavily on Czech Republic on this one but theres allways a chance to make a difference. :) Overtimes and penalty shootouts have usually been a death penalty against you.
2001 hurt so much. Even Sweden wanted us to win. Then came Sihvonen who should have had no business being on that team :(:ha:
 

Lartsaman

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Aug 2, 2018
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2001 hurt so much. Even Sweden wanted us to win. Then came Sihvonen who should have had no business being on that team :(:ha:

Yeah, I remember literally crying after that Moravec OT goal. Since then Ive wanted that some day we could face each other again in the final and take revenge. :D
 
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Czechboy

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2010s have been one sided. Finland won semifinal 2014. We lost at quarters against czechs in 2010 and 2015(Jagr...), bronze medal game 2012 and two times at round robin 2017 and 2011.

And some older finnish fans remember the final games in 1999 and 2001. Odds are heavily on Czech Republic on this one but theres allways a chance to make a difference. :) Overtimes and penalty shootouts against you have usually been a death penalty for us.
That is shocking to me.... our decline is roughly 2012. The early 2000's we were good at this.lol

It's clearly an anamoly because Finns are currently better and have been for at least 5 years.

Bad luck.

I consider you guys the favs to be honest but I think, with these specific rosters, that it should be very close.

Don't really want to play you at the Olympics though.haha
 

FiLe

Mr. Know-It-Nothing
Oct 9, 2009
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Finland vs. Czechia results from the last 10 years (and looking further than that is pointless, as it's a completely different era with a different generation of players) :

2011 Group - Czechia won 2-1
2012 Bronze - Czechia won 3-2
2014 SF - Finland won 3-0
2015 QF - Czechia won 5-3
2017 Group - Czechia won 4-3 in SO

Tightly contested games for the most part. In 2011 and 2017, despite losing to the Czechs in the group stage, the Finns ended up finishing higher in the final tournament table.

Trying to predict what will happen tomorrow is largely pointless, if you ask me. It's a fairly even match-up, and it's just a single game, not a series. It's a total crapshoot.
 

Czechboy

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Finland vs. Czechia results from the last 10 years (and looking further than that is pointless, as it's a completely different era with a different generation of players) :

2011 Group - Czechia won 2-1
2012 Bronze - Czechia won 3-2
2014 SF - Finland won 3-0
2015 QF - Czechia won 5-3
2017 Group - Czechia won 4-3 in SO

Tightly contested games for the most part. In 2011 and 2017, despite losing to the Czechs in the group stage, the Finns ended up finishing higher in the final tournament table.

Trying to predict what will happen tomorrow is largely pointless, if you ask me. It's a fairly even match-up, and it's just a single game, not a series. It's a total crapshoot.
I'd honestly remove 2011 and 2012... Those were very strong Czech teams. It all went to hell after that!
 

Czechboy

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Thank you! What do you think the win against Slovakia will do for the team's morale (if anything)? I know we rested some key players (as did the Slovaks) and the game really had no more of a status than that of a friendly (the US and Finland are both strong so even wanting to win to get to play one team as opposed the other would not have been much motivation (despite our poor record against the US in quarter finals..)). Obviously you always want to win and enjoy beating a friendly rival like Slovakia, but the team also looked much more like a cohesive unit than before, they were skating for each other more... hard to say to what extent Slovakia's weakness and that very quick goal contributed to it though. So i don't want to overestimate it, but I read some interviews in the Czech press today where players were saying it had a real positive impact psychologically on them. Let's hope that they can carry it into the difficult Finland game.
If I'm being honest... I see no benefit from Slovakia game. I would've rather played the Finn's after a hard fought Denmark game and not a weird 'placement friendly'. Slovaks were missing key guys and probably exhausted mebtally. I also fear they will look at certain guys that did well agaibst Slovakia and ice the wrong roster based on it.

I was really happy for the first time scorers. Only thing I really wanted was chytil to get reps as a 1C... And he didn't finish warmups. Lol

Eg. If we play Slovakia again... I don't expect us to score 7. I really don't want us thinking we are world beaters going against Finland. Hungry and humble underdogs suits us better!

Your thoughts?
 

Old Man Jags

Registered User
Mar 25, 2006
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If I'm being honest... I see no benefit from Slovakia game. I would've rather played the Finn's after a hard fought Denmark game and not a weird 'placement friendly'. Slovaks were missing key guys and probably exhausted mebtally. I also fear they will look at certain guys that did well agaibst Slovakia and ice the wrong roster based on it.

I was really happy for the first time scorers. Only thing I really wanted was chytil to get reps as a 1C... And he didn't finish warmups. Lol

Eg. If we play Slovakia again... I don't expect us to score 7. I really don't want us thinking we are world beaters going against Finland. Hungry and humble underdogs suits us better!

Your thoughts?

I agree with most of this. Being the underdog has ALWAYS suited us better (and to be fair, the Fins are actually favourites in this game, but only by a whisker), and Pesan already said that some of the players who came in when he rested others against Slovakia have given him selection headaches. I fear he may make the wrong choices against Finland. That said, I do think gaining some confidence is good for the team. Not overconfidence or sloppiness - but I don't think there is too much danger of this - but a healthy belief that they can do it is positive. I hope anyway!
 

Mestaruus

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Apr 11, 2011
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Eg. If we play Slovakia again... I don't expect us to score 7. I really don't want us thinking we are world beaters going against Finland. Hungry and humble underdogs suits us better!

Your thoughts?

We lost to Czech in EHT 2 weeks ago with Finland having almost the same roster so Czech is the favorite and we/Finland gladly accept the underdog position.
 

Old Man Jags

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Mar 25, 2006
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We lost to Czech in EHT 2 weeks ago with Finland having almost the same roster so Czech is the favorite and we/Finland gladly accept the underdog position.

We (Czechs) beat pretty much the same Russian team 4-0 a few weeks ago in the world championship prep, but lost 3-4 at this tournament. This shows once again that prep and the real thing are very different worlds, and we humbly accept our underdog position in tonight's game :)
 
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Czechboy

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We lost to Czech in EHT 2 weeks ago with Finland having almost the same roster so Czech is the favorite and we/Finland gladly accept the underdog position.
EHT means nothing. I like the concept and enjoy seeing the combos coaches come with but they don't have much correlation with reality.

And we are the underdogs not you.lol

Maybe rock, paper, scissor to settle it!
 
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