HELSINKI – Two games, two goals, two wins. Sometimes you can win even if you score just one goal, and Finland has now done it twice in the tournament. The hosts took their second win of the tournament by beating Slovakia 1-0.
Janne Pesonen scored the game winning goal, and Petri Vehanen made 26 saves in Finland's goal en route to a shutout.
"Both goalies played really well. It made it difficult for them to score, but at the time time, we have to be more efficient. We had the chances to score more goals," Pesonen said.
A year and a day ago, Finland beat Slovakia 2-1 in Bratislava en route to the World Championship gold. While Finland has most of last year’s players returning to defend the title, in Slovakia, a new generation is taking over.
Both teams had made a goalie change to the second game. Slovakia’s head coach Vladimir Vujtek had given the nod to Jan Laco, while Finland’s Jukka Jalonen had decided to go with Petri Vehanen, last year’s starter.
Both goalies showed in the first period that they were worthy of the coaches’ faith in them. Slovakia outshot Finland 12-9 in the period, but Vehanen turned away all twelve of them.
Laco, however, was beat at 7:32 when Janne Pesonen’s quick backhander from the slot found its way to the back of the net. Mikael Granlund set up the goal with a smart pass from behind the net.
"Granlund passed the puck to me from behind the net to me in front. It was bouncing a little but I tried to shoot it right away, but it went over my blade. Luckily I got it back, and I turned around and shot on my backhand. It went in this time," Pesonen said.
"It was a bit of a lucky shot, but I'll take it," he added.
Slovakia outshot Finland 23-14 in two periods, but couldn’t create many dangerous scoring chances, and when they did, Vehanen was there to stop the puck. Same goes for Finland. In the third period, when Slovakia found themselves in penalty trouble – taking two penalties within a minute and 48 seconds from each other, and then a third one just minutes later – Finland really had the Slovaks on their heels, but couldn’t capitalize on the chance.
"The penalties were pretty much one-sided, I think. It seemed like a lot of stuff was over-looked," said Slovakia captain Zdeno Chara.
"We were on our heels, especially in the first period. We had some good chances, though, but we didn't put them in," he added.
Slovakia had just a handful of attacks in the third period, and had trouble getting into the Finnish zone. It was only in the last few minutes of the game that Slovakia really made a push, but Finland could weather the storm, and grab the win.
The team has now two wins, but have scored only twice. Finnish players didn't seem to be too concerned about the lack of production.
"Defense is the foundation of our game. Not that we'd just wait for the other team to make a move but we want to be active and work as a five-man unit," said Niko Kapanen.
"It's like I've said, and even a great player like Teemu Selänne always says, 'there's no need to get worried as long as there are chances', and I believe that once we get a couple of pucks in, our confidence will improve and we can relax a little bit," added team captain Mikko Koivu.
The good news for Finland is the fact that they now have two goalies who have recorded a shutout in the tournament.
"Good goaltending and defense have always been one of Finland's trademarks," said Koivu.
Finland played in sweaters that were replicas of the ones the team wore in the 1988 Olympic tournament in which they won the nation’s first medal, a silver.
RISTO PAKARINEN |
