GDT: Semifinal - May 25 - Russia vs Finland

[Gobben]

Just curious, did he say something bright or did he just give an interview in his first language?

Aha, he is Finlandsvensk. Well, it is no surprise then

I imagined that with a name like Lankinen, that he grew up without knowledge of Swedish.

 

[Ippenator]

Ryska sågningen: Går inte att njuta

Russian media: finland is a boring team.

Sure. They would have been a very fun team if they would have just put a red welcoming carpet all the way through the ice to their goal, played with holding their sticks from the blades and with blindfolds on for each player.

Damn what a boring team Finland was, that they after all tried to beat their opponents with the better effort and better team play than their opponents. Booohooohoohoo, Finland ain’t nice. They play too hard with heart - it ain’t fair!

 

[MoeTheHobo]

Aha, he is Finlandsvensk. Well, it is no surprise then

I imagined that with a name like Lankinen, that he grew up without knowledge of Swedish.

Imagine my "dissapointment when I realised Mikael Granlund doesn't speak swedish haha

 

[Ukkosenjumala]

Dishonesty is not something you just shake off as a culture after a brutal communist system though ("They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work") . Just saying. There is deep trauma there and lying about things is a symptom which I'm sure they will overcome eventually because the Russians are a very resiliant people.

Eh, it's just a culture that in general treats an admission of failure or introspection as an admission of weakness and perceived weakness is the cardinal sin for a Russian, no matter how weak you are in reality. It's permeated all over the culture, even in the names like "Vladimir" which translates to "Great power". It's not really dishonest to say Finland played a simple and suffocating game that's maybe not the greatest hockey to watch but not owing up to why you lost to that and why Finland played such way is public posturing that serves no other purpose than to deflect criticism from yourself. The cossack takes what isn't nailed down, if it's nailed down you just complain that there were nails instead of putting in the work to get it.

 

[BL92]

Sure. They would have been a very fun team if they would have just put a red welcoming carpet all the way through the ice to their goal, played with holding their sticks from the blades and with blindfolds on for each player.

Damn what a boring team Finland was, that they after all tried to beat their opponents with the better effort and better team play than their opponents. Booohooohoohoo, Finland ain’t nice. They play too hard with heart - it ain’t fair!

Beating Russia has become even better than beating Sweden. Year after year we're able to stun them and the amount of salt after is indescribable. Couldn't be more enjoyable.

 

[clydesdale line]

Well, Canada's defeated Finland every single time in the finals. Surely at some point the tide will turn and Finland will actually end up winning? Wouldn't be the most unlikely thing to happen in this tournament...

Well they do have Kakko. He's got those Toews type intangibles of winning.

 

[jj cale]

One thing I will say about the Russian player comments here and all the talk about being sore losers and not being able to take a loss with class, etc,etc is that I sure hope all that is remembered by each sides fans win or lose tomorrow.

I've found that memories tend to be short around here when it comes to class and being good winners and all gets thrown out the window with some (many) fans here when the worm turns and they are on the losing side.

It's pretty easy to be all sugar and spice and everything nice when the team you cheer for wins(and some can't even do that here) but it is how someone acts when they lose is where you really see what they are made of. We had a terrible example of that today in the Canada-Czech GDT.

Food for thought.

 

[illone84]

Here you go.

Awesome, thanks!!!

 

[Porvari]

Aha, he is Finlandsvensk. Well, it is no surprise then

I imagined that with a name like Lankinen, that he grew up without knowledge of Swedish.

It's often not that clearcut. Mikael Granlund's Swedish, for example, is probably on a par with John LeClair's French.

 

[karhukissa]

Lol after reading the comments fron russians I just gotta laugh how childish cry babies they are. Grow up.

It doesn't surprise me at all, unfortunately. Media and Gusev crying that Finland is playing anti-hockey and stuff like that.

I mean, if you can't score with those players you only have to look in the mirror. I understand it's humiliating to lose to a team which earns about 10 times less money combined than Ovie, but please.

 

[grieves]

Eh, it's just a culture that in general treats an admission of failure or introspection as an admission of weakness and perceived weakness is the cardinal sin for a Russian, no matter how weak you are in reality. It's permeated all over the culture, even in the names like "Vladimir" which translates to "Great power". It's not really dishonest to say Finland played a simple and suffocating game that's maybe not the greatest hockey to watch but not owing up to why you lost to that and why Finland played such way is public posturing that serves no other purpose than to deflect criticism from yourself. The cossack takes what isn't nailed down, if it's nailed down you just complain that there were nails instead of putting in the work to get it.

I think you are half-right and I am half-right. I think what you say is true.

I completely respect Russian culture especially when you take into consideration our overtly feminized North-West-European culture (Finland is still the last bastion of Scandinavian masculinity [in general terms, not accepting everything blindly but also judging bad elements] but it is under attack as well).

 

[Ippenator]

Everyone speaks about skill. Jalonen said that top nhl players have little more skill with the puck. In other skills this finnish roster is not behind at all. Also to play smart and for the team is a mental skill and this roster definitely has it.

If a team wants to play up to its full potential, it has to play with its strengths and play the opponents strengths away. Skill with the puck is just a fraction of the game but the big audience likes to think it is all that counts.

This is exactly what I have been saying for a long time already. It is exactly so that the best NHL players are mostly a bit better with their puck skills than most of the best European top league’s players, but by other means there are not that much of differences really. Jalonen is really an extremely knowledgeable hockey person, so I really think he knows what he’s talking about. And my own eyes have told me the same thing already for more than a decade. The NHL is of course the best league in the world, but the difference to the top European leagues isn’t definitely massive like it has been falsely claimed to be by some people who constantly put the NHL on an undeserved pedestal.

 

[RageQuit77]

That "anti-hockey" argument is internally contradictory to its bare bones. Any winning hockey must be good , and by definition and default of Anti-anti-hockey, considering what is the goal of the game.

Oh God (Ukko Perkele here) I hope Finns never change what works. And again, Thank you Jalonen, to make it work. Guru! Thank you Team Finland to make it work in practice.

Show some Sisu once more again and bring the Poika to a sauna!

 

[Cellee]

Finland blocking shots at the end was pure respect from over here

They sold out

 

[BullLund]

It doesn't surprise me at all, unfortunately. Media and Gusev crying that Finland is playing anti-hockey and stuff like that.

I mean, if you can't score with those players you only have to look in the mirror. I understand it's humiliating to lose to a team which earns about 10 times less money combined than Ovie, but please.

They did get off 32 shots, and had plenty of solid opportunities to score. A team playing "anti-hockey" probably have given up that many chances.


While the Finnish defense was exceptional, it was hardly unbreakable. And Lankinen, despite being hot, is a beatable goalie (he gave up 4 goals in 18 shots to Sweden). The Russians had a very good goalie themselves, who saved all but one of almost 30 shots (Sweden's Lundqvist gave up 5 of 32 the other night).

The Russian players just didn't have their finishing touch during this game. The Finns capitalized on that. You cannot win a game without scoring a goal.

I expected a tough game where Finland would have to score about 3 goals, if they wanted to win. Didn't think that the Russians wouldn't be able to score a single goal with all of the offensive talent that they had.

This time, they had a good goalie and a solid defense. But perhaps most unexpectedly, their offense didn't show up.

 

[illone84]

Jani Hakanpää speaks fluent Swedish!

 

[Zine]

You know I was gonna post something after the game about how the Russian media, players or the coaches would whine about the way Finland played and it kinda saddens me that I figured it would be better to wait because you know they would and I could just post it then.

This might not be PC but that's such a Russian thing to do. Imagine the USA Olympic basketball team complaining about the way the Argentinians played in 2004....except we didn't even have a Manobili. It's beyond pathetic.

Dishonesty is not something you just shake off as a culture after a brutal communist system though ("They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work") . Just saying. There is deep trauma there and lying about things is a symptom which I'm sure they will overcome eventually because the Russians are a very resiliant people.

Quit talking rubbish.

Like 99% of everything being written right now, including interviews with tons of Russian hockey people of note, is totally praising Finland's performance while thrashing our own players and coaches.

It's gotten so bad that Ovechkin's wife felt the need to make a public statement saying Russian hockey fans need to learn from NHL fans on how to support our own players after a tough loss.

 

[hyperion]

Well, that's a HUGE overstatement, they've done nothing but strangling skillful teams. Just enjoy your success and I really like the story, but come on now, don't get cocky. When your entire strategy revolves around strangling better teams, you can't exactly claim it's universally entertaining hockey with a straight face, can you?

I'm not complaining, it's absolutely fine, but don't go overboard here. Well, sure, it's "entertaining" and it is a close game like hell, but... in reality it's just a bunch of Finns skating around like crazed lemmings within certain patterns, that they would scream out if you woke them from a bad nightmare. The Finnish players collapse around their net faster in any situation than I would be able to pronounce "Kalsarikännit".

Don't claim that "no other team has played as entertaining hockey as Finland", because then you're just 100% dishonest, or crazy. Or a patriotic Finn.

Just no. Please don't ever write something like that again.

First of all, level of entertainment is absolutely a subjective matter. Any random poster on these forums is thousand percent within their logical rights to write a post declaring Team Finland's hockey the most entertaining of them all. You can't take it away or deny it. Entertainment not really a measurable and quantifiable object, nor is there a objective singular truth for level of entertainment of one teams playstyle. For some people absolutely simply just the underdog premise is enough to make a game entertaining. Rocky wasn't that great a boxer based on what he seemed to be doing in the movies, but quite many were entertained by them, right? Others might get their kicks out seeing a system prevail over individual virtuosity. Individual virtuosity is cool and all, but ice hockey does happen to be a team sport. In case someone is purely interested in individual skills, there might be better sports out there for those people (hint: Individual sport - Wikipedia). In hockey, there are 6 guys in the rink and 15 other guys at the bench for a purpose. And quite easily for some home-brewn academics and kitchen psychiatrists, the battle of head coach vs. head coach might be the best thing ever - never mind the players. Or for some others something weird like seeing Malkin or Ovechkin cry at the end of the game might be the most entertaining thing on the planet in 2019. And so on.

Second of all, something that so many people might actually miss. Ice hockey's primary purpose is not to be entertaining. Ice hockey is a sport about the result. Primary purpose of teams in the rink is to win a game, not to be entertaining. Understanding this is the key to having a meaningful conversation about the matter. There are pure entertainment-based 'shows' out there, and for people looking just entertainment it just might make more sense to try to look for these things in the oh-so-wide offering of prime time procrastination available to us today. NBA game Warriors vs Trail Blazers is about the result. Whatever Harlem Globetrotters decide to do next is about entertainment. UFC is a sport about the result, and WWE is entertainment. And so is ice hockey a sport about the result. It's totally OK to just like the entertainment stuff, but people should not be watching WWE and UFC with the same criteria. Don't bring entertainment to the front row - if you don't like the sport of ice hockey, it just might make most sense to follow something else.

Third, respect the sport. While definitely the worst thing in your message is the phrase "universally entertaining hockey" (read item #1), also the statement like "strangling better teams" is just really really bad form. While the underdog situation definitely can exist, it's just a premise and when a game has ended and a result is drawn, premise should be forgotten. There is no other way to measure betterness between teams than playing a match of the sport in question. Finland did not strangle "a better team" today. Finland was the better team (read item #2 in case it's unclear how this is true), and that result remains as a fact ad infinitum.

 

[Merya]

Anttila is 4th liner in the KHL.. What are you talking about him not getting a shot..

Jokerit 4th line is more like Kris Drapers 3rd line in Detroit's best days. Check the average icetime Anttila has got in Jokerit.

Fan vad gött
Mom's a krigsbarn (war child) - this result was good for her heart.

We love this kind of stories in Finland. Kiitos!

Finland blocking shots at the end was pure respect from over here
They sold out

Sakari Manninen threw himself in front of a big shot already in first period. That's indication of the heart this team has.

Finland will need another miracle to win against Kanada in the final. There's no way around it. Normal day Kanada wins 5-1.

 

[aphyro]

I think you are half-right and I am half-right. I think what you say is true.

I completely respect Russian culture especially when you take into consideration our overtly feminized North-West-European culture (Finland is still the last bastion of Scandinavian masculinity [in general terms, not accepting everything blindly but also judging bad elements] but it is under attack as well).

Finland isnt a scandinavia country tho

 

[RageQuit77]

Finns and Finnish hockey fans shouldn't have to "defend" this victory anyway. There are no out-of-hockey excuses available.

I'm sure that very rare Finns or Finnish hockey fans have anything personal against any Russian hockey players, many of us being actually fans of them (following example of not that small group of Finnish hockey players that are fans of certain Russian superstars).

As personal example: For me Alexander Ovechkin is the Guy that comes first to mind if some one want talk about a great hockey player (particularly if talking about active players). Consequently, I nearly always take naturally my place as Ovechkin fan-boy (he is the par) when it goes to Crosby vs Ovi talks. I also consider certain historical Red Army lineups the best ever existed in the game of hockey, in terms of skill, synergy, efficiency, and bravado. There are absolutely nothing "anti-Russian" in my approach within frameworks of the Game of Hockey.

I also know that Russians are very emotinal what comes to hockey, and this is common characteristic with Finns, maybe some differing nuances in how it shows. I also recognize imminent out-of-hockey symbol values playing part in these kind games and their results, but I'm not guilty for how they were once born/built. I'm neither obliged to feel any accountability for that losing team members of a losing team may have or feel they have.

Respect should be shown to both directions when its warranted.

 

[BlitzSnipe]

Eh, it's just a culture that in general treats an admission of failure or introspection as an admission of weakness and perceived weakness is the cardinal sin for a Russian, no matter how weak you are in reality. It's permeated all over the culture, even in the names like "Vladimir" which translates to "Great power". It's not really dishonest to say Finland played a simple and suffocating game that's maybe not the greatest hockey to watch but not owing up to why you lost to that and why Finland played such way is public posturing that serves no other purpose than to deflect criticism from yourself. The cossack takes what isn't nailed down, if it's nailed down you just complain that there were nails instead of putting in the work to get it.

"Vladimir" does not mean "Great power". Where did you get that information from? It means "Reigns in peace".

 

[aphyro]

Jani Hakanpää speaks fluent Swedish!

Hmm wouldent say fluent from the interviews i've seen with him but his Swedish is light years better than my Finnish

 

[ijuka]

Dont quote me. It was russian media who said finland played anti hockey.

Ryska sågningen: Går inte att njuta

Russian news being salty about losses, nothing else. Even blaming refs, very funny. Then we have neutrals like German broadcasters thinking that Russians got favored by refs etc.

 

[BL92]

Finland blocking shots at the end was pure respect from over here

They sold out

All for one, one for all. Absolutely beautiful.