A first for the last: often passed close to Olympic consecration, Finland finally offered gold by beating Russia 2 to 1 in the final of the men’s ice hockey tournament for the final event of the 2022 Olympics. Beijing, Sunday.
Beijing-2022 is over and the Chinese fortnight will forever be engraved in the history of Finnish hockey.
The Finnish Lejonen (literally, lions) are finally the kings of the ice: it was not until their 18th participation, including 17 consecutive between 1960 and 2022, in the Olympic tournament that they roar on the top step of the podium.
The 2022 final had however started badly for Finland: Russia, under a neutral and sacred flag in 2018, had opened the scoring at the end of the first period by Mikhail Grigorenko.
But far from giving up, the Finns rolled up their sleeves and used their physical power in defense to defeat the Russian attackers.
Ville Pokka ended up concretizing the Finnish domination, with a distant shot at the start of the second period (1-1), before the KO at the very start of the 3rd period: after a bad dismissal from his goalkeeper Ivan Fedotov, Russia found herself under pressure and Hannes Bjorninen took the opportunity to give her team the advantage by deflecting a long shot.
” Huge “
“We played very well throughout this tournament and that’s the reward. For our country, this title is something strong, we had come very close several times, it’s great to win this first title, ”summarized Finnish captain Valtteri Ilpulla.
“We had to find the solution to win this final, we succeeded, it’s huge,” added his teammate Miro Aaltonen.
Finland, whose third and last world title dates back to 2019, had until then posted 2nd place in 1988 and 2006 for best result in the Olympic tournament.
Subscribers to the last four almost continuously since 1988 (3rd in 1994, 1998, 2010 and 2014), the Finns took full advantage of the absence of the stars of the North American League (NHL) who were not released by their teams due to the Covid-19 pandemic and disruptions to the Championship.
Canada and the United States, with university players, quickly eliminated in the quarter-finals, Finland successively faced Switzerland (5-1) and Slovakia (2-0) to reach the final without too much difficulty .
On Saturday, Slovakia crushed Sweden 4-0 to win the bronze medal, their first Olympic medal thanks to two goals from 17-year-old prodigy Juraj Slafkovksy, the tournament’s top scorer and player who is attracting a lot of interest in the NHL. .