100mph slapshot said:
My opinion on the game and the Finnish team:
Goaltending - Niittymäki was solid. Nothing spectacular, but got the job done. DiPietro was shaky and not at his best. None of those goals were completely his fault, but goaltending in general was a big factor in this game
1st line - Completely lost and I think I know the reason. Saku had definitely mentally overcharged himself to the game. His timing was terrible and passing was far from crisp and accurate. Those penalties were quite clear, maybe the 3rd was borderline but for a captain this kind of performance is unacceptable. Saku is the brains in that line and him out of his normal self makes the whole line pretty much useless.
2nd line - Excellent game. Peltonen really stepped up big time and carried that line on his back. They need to keep this up.
3rd and 4th line - Nice hustle here and there, but Nemo's 2 penalties really killed the momentum from our checking game. Third period was horrible, but so was the whole team. Both N. Kapanen and M. Koivu lost countless face-offs when it mattered the most.
D - Decent at best. Salo was a stud out there until his injury and Berg continued his safe and solid play. Nummelin and Timonen were both outmuscled, but Nummelin atleast made up for it by giving some good outlet passes. Lydman was suprsingly shaky, again (I have to say the same about Numminen) . Overrall, way too many bad passes and turnovers.
The FIN were lucky they won because apart from the 1st period, Team US outplayed and outworked us by a considerable margin. The 3rd period as a whole was absolutely pathetic. If we don't improve our game we're sure fire 4th place. And that would suck.
Good post, I couldn't agree more.
Let's face it, team Finland was lucky to win today.
This was by far our worst game so far. US deserves some credit also, to be honest you guys would have earned atleast a tie, that third period was pure dominance from your part, even when you were playing shorthanded. You could just feel that panic crawling into the minds of some of the finnish players yet again
. We tried to defend a two goal lead the entire 3rd period thinking we were team Sweden or something. What a painful game to watch at the end.
I hope this was the "bad game" of the tournament for us. Niitty was good though, little shaky at first but in the end he saved our bacon in this one.
I take back all the nasty things I said about Devorski, both teams had questionable penalties called. I was simply caught by the emotions thanks to our commentator Mertaranta. BTW I love how Devorski signals the 2 minute minor penalty