Finland’s gritty comeback win another example of how they thrive as the underdog
Finland managed to stay alive in the men’s Olympic hockey tournament, and that’s just the way they like it.
The Finns went down early against Switzerland in their quarterfinal on Wednesday, even trailing heading into the third period. However, Suomi came to life when it mattered most, with Sebastian Aho and Miro Heiskanen scoring late to send the game into overtime, and Artturi Lehkonen playing the hero in overtime, giving Finland a 3-2 win.
It certainly wasn’t an easy victory for Finland, but it shows the resilience the group has, making them a very tough opponent for Canada in the semifinal on Friday.
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discuss how Finland’s underdog mentality helped them come back to beat the Swiss.
Tyler Yaremchuk: All of these teams kind of playing true to what we think they are and Finland their strength of – Juuse Saros makes big saves and he was good. This wasn’t one of those games where the shots were 45 to 14 for Finland and they just steamrolled him and ran into a hot goalie and all that. Finland’s structured sound they gave up the two goals in like a minute and a half stretch, didn’t give up anything else, but they struggled to produce offense, and it took them until the very end to finally, finally get a couple goals on the board.
Carter Hutton: I think early in this game, my takeaway would be a costly puck-handling error by Juuse Saros ends up the back of the net. And then, Mikkola just screens his own goalie on the play on the second goal. Then from there, it feels like you’re fighting an uphill battle, but they stuck with it. They don’t change. That’s something about the Finns…that’s nothing new to us. The Finns are always known for playing that structured, dependable hockey, very predictable. Yesterday, it served. I think they’re gonna be up to a big challenge against Team Canada’s dynamic offense. But the consistency in the play of Juuse Saros is gonna be an ex-factor for the Finns in this next matchup.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…