TK79 said:
Sami Salo and Jarkko Ruutu where named to the Finnish World Championship team today. Salo is an wellcome addition and will make the defense better, but what can Ruutu possibly bring to the team? He's too slow for the international rinks and has hands of stone. Coach Raimo Summanen seems to be infatuated with NHL forwards, as he also made some very questionable selections, naming Lazy-Lasse Pirjetä, Niko Kapanen and Esa Pirnnes to the team. They all had terrible seasons in the NHL and mostly sat on the bench. Why couldn't he select players like Antti Miettinen or Kimmo Kuhta and Jarkko Immonen, who actually have the potentional to score? Finland already has enough grinders, it's going to be really frustrating to watch the team outshoot opponents 35-15 and lose 3-1.Again..
Pirnes was pound for pound Finlands best player last year. He wasn't a star, but the work he did was great. He won faceoffs, competed fiercely and was full of energy. He was the best player in SM-Liiga at the end of the season, rose up to the challenge of the playoffs and rose up to the challenge of the world championships. Not choosing him would be stupid.
Besides, even on the 3rd/4th line he'd be better than Kuhta/immonen/miettinen who either a) aren't 4th line players ie useless there or b) had even worse seasons than him (Miettinen)
Ruuut was great in the olympics and a "team" needs its character players to push it, colourless players will result in collapses like when we lost 5-(5+1) to Sweden last year, had we had Nieminen there the result would have been different as he'd have kept the guys alive.. Ruutu would certainly have pissed Forsberg or someone else off in the box so we woudnt lose too..
Lasse ended the season brilliantly. That's something that must be considered. And he too knows what lower line duty means. This is very important for Finland.
Unlike Canada, we can't build a team of 4 first lines. *thinks* Russia could probably build that..
If we want to succeed in the Olympics/World Cup, when it counts, we need "teams" that resemeble what a winning club team would be. Clear offensive lines, clear trap lines and clear 4th liners. That's what we were like in 1998 in Nagano and that recipe was perfection. Summanen understands that and works with that, not against that.
It'd be suicide to go to any tournament with 4 first lines.
But for Canada.. it could work..