HELSINKI – The World Championship came as a shock to the system for the Finns. A positive shock, of course, but still a shock. After all, Finland wasn’t supposed to be able to win the gold medal with the number of Finns drafted in the NHL Entry draft going down, the under-20 team supposedly in decline, and – according to a most of the Finnish media – a system than doesn’t produce good enough players anymore.

And, now this. In a Twitter-era word: Boom.

All kinds of history was made. For example, head coach Jukka Jalonen became the first Finnish head coach to take his team all the way.

“It’s nice to be the first Finn, because it’s something that’ll stay in the history books, but Finland has been in the final many times before, and could have won it,” Jalonen told IIHF.com.

“We had several players on the team who really wanted to win this time. History played a big part in our success,” he added.

And sure enough, Mikko Koivu, Tuomo Ruutu, and Jarkko Immonen added a men’s gold to their under-18 gold from 2000. (Jalonen called the Bratislava team “Koivu’s team”). Pasi Puistola, in turn, was on the 1998 team that won the World U20 Championship in Helsinki in 1998.

Jalonen himself had been under the gun, as well. Two early exits at the World Championships in Switzerland and Germany the years before weren’t good enough for the Finns. According to common belief, Finland won the bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympics despite Jalonen, not thanks to him.

Maybe that’s why Jalonen seemed a little cautious before the tournament. In one interview before the tournament, he said that a gold medal was “a dream” whereas a medal was a realistic goal. Now he says he was partly misinterpreted, but also admits that he didn’t think pounding your chest before the tournament seemed smart.

“Of course all top teams want to win the gold, and that’s what they are after in every tournament, and in that sense, it’s the dream goal. But big talk doesn’t really help,” he says.

“Our motto for the tournament, and the only thing we asked our players for was “all out”. We wanted to focus on the performance, on the way we played. If everything truly went all out, and left everything on the ice, our goal, our dream – winning the gold – would be a little closer. We were performance-oriented, not result-oriented,” he adds.

That, and a few changes in the system, made Finland a well balanced team. Jalonen says he had put a little more focus on defence, and on communication between the players and the coaching staff. He also had the luxury of having more than half the team on the pre-tournament training camp for six weeks, making sure everybody was on board.

“I don’t think I realized it then, but it was important that the guys got to become a real team, and that they really knew our system. Also, our camp gave the players a chance to get back into a great physical shape, after the spring when they had mostly just played games,” Jalonen says.

With the system engrained in the players’ minds, and a tight-knit group ready to hit the ice, Jalonen, too, could focus on the now.

“I think I knew better how to make right decisions during the game. And for the players, and all of us, it was easier to not think about results too much. All we had to focus on was now. That game. After that, we’d rest, make a quick analysis, and move forward,” he says.

A World Championship will surely cement hockey’s position as the country’s number one sport, and attract even more gifted athletes to the rinks. According to Jalonen, the future of Finnish hockey looks good.

“The fact that we’re now second in the IIHF World Ranking is fantastic. It’s Finland’s best ranking ever, and proof that we’ve done something right in the past as well, even if the last tournament is stressed more than the previous one,” says Jalonen.

Jalonen, who has two sons born in 1994 and 1996, has his finger on the pulse of Finnish junior hockey as well.

“I’ve seen quite a few games in the last few years, and I really see a bright future. Nothing spectacular, but a lot of good players born in 1993, 1994, and 1995, who are now beating, for example, Sweden regularly. In five to ten years, we’ll have a good generation of players – as will the other top nations,” he says.

“Our team play improves, even in the junior national teams, and Finland will be a tough team to be in the future. We may not have the brightest stars, but we will have good players that play, hopefully, a system that’s the best in the world,” he adds.

Like many other nations, the Finns often think of themselves as people who crumble under pressure. Jalonen’s team rallied back from a two-goal deficit in their games against Germany and Russia, and were down 1-0 in their game against Slovakia – and in the final against Sweden.

“I’m sure Finland has been able to do it in the past as well, but this time we even managed to do it in the final. But, Finns did well in other sports as well. For example, Kaisa Mäkäräinen in biathlon, I was really impressed by her, and maybe things like that encourage even hockey players to rise to the occasion,” Jalonen says.

Like one Mikael Granlund. What went through the coach’s mind when the 19-year-old forward scored his lacrosse-style goal in the semi-final against Russia?

“My mind was blank. My jaw just dropped and I probably slipped out a cussword, just out of disbelief. I saw that it was a goal, right away, but when I saw the replay on the jumbotron, I saw how he stole the puck in the corner, went around that other defenceman, and that I had missed. That whole sequence was a fantastic performance,” says Jalonen.

And so was the result.

RISTO PAKARINEN