Semi-final preview: Finland vs. USA & More News Here

Two groups from Group B, Finland and the USA, will meet in Saturday’s early semi-final sport at Tampere’s Nokia Arena, the identical enviornment the place their complete group stage was performed.

Finland completed first within the group and the USA completed fourth, however there wasn’t an enormous hole between the 2. In truth, if the USA had gained their head-to-head assembly within the group stage in regulation as an alternative of dropping it, the 2 groups would have completed tied on 16 factors.

“I think we deserved to be a higher seed,” mentioned Hartman. “We let a couple games get away so we fell to that fourth spot.”

In Wednesday’s quarter-finals, Finland overcame an early 2-0 deficit to beat Slovakia, whereas the USA didn’t let its early 2-0 lead get away towards previously-unbeaten Switzerland, successful 3-0.

Home ice has been a bonus for the Finns thus far in Tampere, the place they’ve gained seven of eight video games in regulation time – the one blemish being a shootout loss to Sweden. The Americans needed to make a visit to Helsinki for the quarter-finals, however now they’re again and prepared for a rematch

“It’s a home atmosphere,” mentioned Hartman. “They’ve got that new rink they’re playing in. There’s gonna be a lot of fans. It should be loud. But we’re just going to worry about ourselves.”

“It’s very important,” mentioned Finnish ahead Niklas Friman. “The crowd here has been amazing through the whole tournament. It’s so nice to see the joy in people’s faces. Of course it’s pressure, but this is top-level sport.”

Finnish ahead Hannes Bjorninen mentioned in regards to the Americans: “They try to play physical hockey. They try to hit hard and play straight forward. They shoot a lot. Pretty normal North American hockey.”

First assembly

Finland and the USA met again on 16 May in every crew’s third group-stage sport. In that sport, Finland constructed up a 4-0 lead within the second interval thanks to 3 objectives on the ability play and one at 4-on-4, and finally gained 4-1. It was a bodily, emotional affair during which the Finns went 3-for-8 on the ability play and the Americans went 0-for-5.

“There were a lot of emotions in the game, lots of penalties on both sides and we capitalized on our power plays pretty well,” Sakari Manninen, who had a objective and two assists, mentioned after the sport.

“We just got caught up in the emotions of the game, took too many penalties,” mentioned U.S. captain Seth Jones, heeding a warning for his crew heading into the semi-final rematch. “That’s kinda the story of it. Against a power play like this, it’s not easy. It was a 1-1 game without the power-play goals. In the end, we out-shot them. They’re a skilled team, very good, very systematic in what they do defensively. But the main story for us is staying out of the box.”

Ten days later, within the aftermath of his crew’s quarter-final win, Finnish captain Valtteri Filppula was cautious to not learn to a lot into that one sport.

“It’s hard to evaluate our first game with so many penalties. It was basically special-teams practice,” he mentioned. “I think it’s going to be a lot tighter and a lot closer this time so we just want to rest and be as ready as possible.”

It’s fairly possible this assembly shall be fairly completely different. After all, every crew has gone by means of some modifications.

Since then…

The loss to Finland is thus far Strauss Mann’s final begin within the U.S. web. Two days after later, the crew added goaltender Jeremy Swayman from the Boston Bruins to the roster, and he’s actually solidified that place. In 5 video games, Swayman has a save share of 96.61, a goals-against common of 0.69 and two shutouts.

The USA additionally added defenceman John Merrill and forwards Matt Boldy and Ryan Hartman from the Minnesota Wild. Merrill, nonetheless, solely performed a few shifts towards Great Britain earlier than getting injured, and he was quickly joined on the sidelines by Nick Blankenburg. As a outcome, the Americans have performed their final 4 video games with solely 5 defencemen, however have held up remarkably properly defensively.

“That shows you what kind of team we have, the resiliency and the effort they give every game,” mentioned Swayman. “It’s been a really fun tournament so far, and we’re looking forward to more.”

Finland has added three NHLers through the event. Forward Markus Granlund from the Nashville Predators was already within the lineup towards the USA and had a three-point sport. Since then, Dallas Stars defencemen Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell have joined.

In that first assembly with the USA, Jussi Olkinuora’s shutout was damaged within the final two minutes on a highlight-reel between-the-legs shot by Alex Galchenyuk. Unfazed, Olkinuora began a brand new streak two video games later and rattled off three straight zeroes to shut out the group stage, finally stretching his shutout streak to 206:44 earlier than being overwhelmed by Slovakia’s Adam Sykora within the first interval of the quarter-finals.

Olkinuora is the one goalie within the event with higher numbers than Swayman – his save share is 97.58, his goals-against common is 0.50 and he has 4 shutouts in six video games.

So yeah, Filppula is aware of what he’s speaking about when he says it’s going to be rather a lot tighter. But every crew can rating too if the alternatives current themselves.

Leading the Americans in scoring thus far with 4 objectives and 6 factors every are 23-year-old Ben Meyers, a University of Minnesota graduate who performed 5 video games this season for the Colorado Avalanche, and 25-year-old journeyman centre Adam Gaudette of the Ottawa Senators.

“It’s been great so far, personally,” Gaudette mentioned of his offensive manufacturing. “It feels good to play in a more relied-on role, a bigger role. That’s one of the reasons I really wanted to come and play for this team, to help this team win.”

As for the Finns, they’ve the dreaded power-play trio of Granlund, Manninen and defenceman Mikko Lehtonen, who leads the crew in scoring with 9 factors. The Americans know from the primary assembly what they will do, so staying out of the field shall be key.

And let’s not overlook the Morko issue. Marko Anttila, Finland’s large checking-line ahead who scored quite a few massive objectives in Finland’s 2019 World Championship victory, got here by means of once more with two objectives within the quarter-finals towards Slovakia to carry his crew again to even.

“It’s unbelievable how he shows up in these big games,” mentioned Granlund. It’s nice to see and you’ll clearly see how the group loves him. He was such an enormous a part of getting the sport tied.

History

Since the introduction of the playoff system for the 1992 World Championship, the USA and Finland have met eight occasions in knockout video games, with Finland holding a 6-2 benefit. The most up-to-date assembly was within the 2013 bronze-medal sport, which the USA gained 5-4 in a shootout. The two groups have met in two earlier semi-finals, with the Finns successful each occasions in 2001 (3-1) and 1994 (8-0).

In truth, beginning with that 1994 sport, the USA has superior to the semi-finals 11 occasions. In each a type of 11 video games, the Americans have misplaced and ended up within the bronze-medal sport – most lately final 12 months in Riga. The final time the Americans gained a medal aside from bronze in a World Championship that wasn’t linked to the Winter Olympics was a silver in 1950 in London. Their solely gold in a non-Olympic 12 months was 1933 in Prague.

The Finns know one thing about medal droughts. As profitable as they’ve been lately, it is perhaps robust to do not forget that they didn’t win their first World Championship medal of any color till 1992 in Prague (silver) and gained their first gold in 1995 in Stockholm.

In the final 10 World Championships, the Finns have superior to the  last 5 occasions, successful gold twice and silver 3 times. But they’ve by no means performed in a last at residence. This semi-final sport towards the USA is the one hurdle in the way in which of creating that lastly occur.

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