Finland Strikes Russia Down!

[Caraway]

Finland 4 - 0 Russia.

http://www.yle.fi/urheilu/
In Finnish, sorry

[Dalleer]

Oh, we won ?


http://www.finalesimpsons.de/content/grab_pics/happy_burns.gif

Excellent!

[Caraway]

Oh, we won ?


http://www.finalesimpsons.de/content/grab_pics/happy_burns.gif

Excellent!
YES!!!!

[Tengu]

gratz

[EvanL]

Good on ya Finland :D
Now it will be a shame to have to wipe you guys down. :(

[Caraway]

Good on ya Finland :D
Now it will be a shame to have to wipe you guys down. :( Nobody can wipe us down...hopefully.

[Stavka]

I hope we get to meet Finland in the Finals. Would be a killer match!

[EvanL]

Good on ya Finland :D
Now it will be a shame to have to wipe you guys down. :( Nobody can wipe us down...hopefully.
We can ;)

[Uninen]

I guess PermiskiiOMON wont be showing his ugly face around here today then.... :D

GJ!

--

Title: Ryssä Mun Leipääni Syö
Artist: Klamydia
Lyrics:

Siellä missä mahorkka haisee,
siellä missä balalaikka soi.
Siellä todelliset mätäpaiseet
meikäläisen piikkiin taas votkaa joi.
Äitimamma ostoslistan kanssa itänaapurissa taapertaa.
Suomirokkii, poppii, iskelmää,
hiphoppii kassi pullollaan.
Niistä penniäkään meille tipu ei.
Me tehtiin se duuni,
mut naapuri rahan vei.

Ryssä mun leipääni syö
ja Mustamäki nakertaa.
Ryssä mun leipääni syö
ja paskaset sormensa hilloon upottaa.

--

No, tänään toisin.. ;)

Link! (http://www.thelyricssite.com/song/Klamydia/Ryss%E4+Mun+Leip%E4%E4ni+Sy%F6)

[RomanS]

I am a man of SPORT

Good Job Finland, and see you guys again.

No beef, no flame, good game.

[Caraway]

I hope we get to meet Finland in the Finals. Would be a killer match! Finland - Sweden, the ultimate mach!!! woot woot

[mustamato]

Finland eliminates Russia with shutout win

http://live82.ihwc.net/image/large/2389.jpg
The Finns celebrate Jukka Hentunen's eventual game-winner

Russia is mathematically eliminated from the quarter-finals, and the Finns have to wait until late tonight before knowing who their opponents will be. Those are the two most important facts to come out of Finland's 4-0 win over Russia.

"It's always tough to lose, whether it's in the NHL or here," said Russian forward Ilya Kovalchuk. "We tried, but it just didn't work out. You always try to represent your country with pride and, at the same time, try to win. It's difficult when you can't do both."

Mika Noronen had the shutout with 19 saves, while Jukka Hentunen, Niko Kapanen, Tomi Kallio and Petteri Nummelin supplied the goals. Janne Niinimaa was a force along the blueline and had three assists, with two of them coming on passes where he sent teammates in on breakaways.

http://live82.ihwc.net/image/large/2388.jpg
The Russians played Finland tight but couldn't find their offense

The game was scoreless halfway through, with Hentunen finally breaking the tie with five minutes remaining in the second period. Up until then, Russia had played a disciplined game and really limited the chances for the Finnish team with a stingy, aggressive defense. In the third period, Russia had the chance to roar back on an early power play but they did not manage to even set up properly. After the Finns made it 2-0 five minutes into the final frame, Russia appeared to be deflated.

"We only put the exact team together one week before the championship started," said Russian Head Coach Viktor Tikhonov. "It takes time to gel, and we did not have that time. First of all, it's the mistakes of the players [that led to us being eliminated]. Second, the lack of time."

For much of the first period, Russia carried the play just as much as the Finnish team did. With a Russian defense playing a tough, physical brand of hockey, effectively stopping the smallish Finns to get in on net, there just weren't many chances created. And Egor Podomatski looked solid in the net, replacing starter Maxim Sokolov. The Finnish team had trouble getting any flow going, and the Russian team looked determined to grasp the final straw.

Alexander Skugarev had the first good chance of the game five minutes into the contest, when he got hold of a rebound in front of Noronen off a shorthanded counterattack after Sami Salo made an errant pass along the offensive blueline. The Finns got even closer, though, as they took control in the last few minutes of the period.

First, Podomatski made a skilled save off Tony Virta's shot on a 2-on-1 with Janne Niinimaa and then followed that up with a shoulder save after Ville Peltonen received a nice pass from Olli Jokinen. A couple of minutes later, Peltonen was millimeters away from giving his team the lead when his close-range shot hit the post with Finland on the power play late in the first period.

The first half of the second period was largely uneventful, with few scoring chances for the teams and the disciplined defensive style of game continuing. The Finnish goose egg was finally cracked fourteen minutes into the middle frame when Janne Niinimaa turned around play in the middle zone and passed the puck to Jukka Hentunen, who had snuck in behind the defense and then scored on his breakaway shot.

The goal did not change much in terms of the game's style. The Russians continued playing their defensive style of hockey, while the Finns were more active in trying to penetrate the Russian wall.

Five minutes into the third period, Russian hopes started to fade rapidly. Niko Kapanen accepted a pass from Jukka Hentunen and skated deep into the slot before firing a wrist shot past Podomatski's stick side for a 3-0 lead. The goal seemed to take a real toll on the Russians, who couldn't get back to the game they had played in the first period.

To close things out, Tomi Kallio got his first goal of the tournament when he fired a slapshot through Podomatski's five-hole to make it 3-0, and Petteri Nummelin got his second of the tournament with a little over a minute left to play.

Finland and the tournament will now move on to Prague. The Russians have to pack up and go home.

Peter Westermark

[Uninen]

I am a man of SPORT

Good Job Finland, and see you guys again.

No beef, no flame, good game.

Geez, sorry.. i was about 100% sure that you would jump the walls.. being as you were for couple of days now on the edge.... :oops:

[RomanS]

I am a man of SPORT

Good Job Finland, and see you guys again.

No beef, no flame, good game.

Geez, sorry.. i was about 100% sure that you would jump the walls.. being as you were for couple of days now on the edge.... :oops:

i get like that sometimes

dont take it seriously

[UkrainianAmerican]

I hate to say it, but team Russia got PWNED :lol:

[Uninen]

Ok. :)

[mustamato]

Good on ya Finland :D
Now it will be a shame to have to wipe you guys down. :( Nobody can wipe us down...hopefully.
We can ;)

Well, in the next game it will be Canada vs. Finland since you luckily lost against
the Czech´s and those bastard Slovakians didn´t win over Sweden.

I´m not all too optimistic, but the Canadians have sucked as well. So who knows.

[Russian Texan]

So what's the big deal?
For the last 10 years everyone who knows how to skate "strikes" Russia down...

Unfortunatelly I do not think it will ever change.
Russia's "team" was put together less than a week before the championship, right after extremely competetive Russian Super League season and right in time for the NHL play-offs. Some players flew in after it started.

Russian team is the team of multimillion dollar superstars, just like US basketball "dream team", hence the performance issues because ice hockey is a team sport and team cohesivness is a key to winning.

Another issue is professionalism. I am against professional sports. Professional athletes are mostly bunch of over payed crybabies who play only when they feel like it and mostly concerned with not getting injured.
Amatures play for the love of the game, they want to win with the passion, they play for pride - that is what among other things made USSR hockey team of the 60s,70s,80s unstoppable.

Even the greatest hockey coach/dictaror of all time Tihonov can do nothing because he needs a team to work with and not a bunch of "professional stars".

Judging on the level of hockey played at the Championship, if Russia just took an average team of its Super league and brought it to Czechoslovakia, that team would murder everyone...
Russia still makes the best hockey players in the world but it's national team can't even beat Latvia...

Here is a very good article by the Swiss journalist about Russian hockey.

The Russian legacy


http://live82.ihwc.net/image/large/2287.jpg
Alexei Yashin is one of the new breed of Russian hockey millionaires

We might not get to see Viktor Vasilievich Tikhonov and his Russians in the quarter-finals. They are virtually out of the 2004 tournament.

But their hockey has survived. Tikhonov forever changed the game that we love.

International hockey has gone through a revolution, mainly because the Russians dominated the IIHF World Championships in the 1970's and 1980's.

As long as the best players of the former Soviet Union practiced and played all year long with the same team (Central Army) and as long as their coach had absolute authority, they were almost unstoppable. They won the gold medal with Tikhonov as head coach in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1989 and 1990.

Only Glen Sather's Edmonton Oilers with Wayne Gretzky, Glenn Anderson, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Jari Kurri in their lineup came close to the offensive glamour of those Soviets. And even they only came close.

The Finns, Czechs and Swedes had to find a way to stop Tikhonov's "Big Red Machine." They developed, in the case of the Swedes, defensive systems (the dreaded "trap"), and they learned to skate, pass and shoot faster. The trap now works better than ever--it's not surprising that a system that could formerly stop Tikhonov's offensive juggernaut from time to time can stop an ordinary offensive team.

But what about those wonderful tic-tac-toe passing plays the Russians used to do better than anyone else?

We will never see that again from the Russians on a consistent basis. There is no political system left with the absolute power to put all the best players from one country on one team for more than a decade. And no one in North America has the money and opportunity (think about the draft system) to buy or put together a team like the one formerly run by Czar Tikhonov.

But watching hockey today, you can still observe elements of the good old Soviet offensive power. Just like we can uncover the bones of a Dinosaur and from that reconstruct what the beast looked like.

For instance, at their best, the Finns look like Russians in blue and white.

Face it, the Russians are basically out of this tournament, and they have not won a gold medal since 1993. But their hockey culture is as strong as ever. The Russian hockey school is still the best and produces as many truly great hockey players as all the other hockey cultures put together.

But nobody can bring them all together in one team. Some say Russian players have too big egos to park them outside the dressing room. Even a Czar like Tikhonov is no longer able to handle all these individualistic characters.

Only 15 years ago, all these guys were living under the Communist system and had no idea about the sports culture in capitalism. Then within a very short time, they became millionaires, and now their behavior is sometimes a little bizarre.

But remember how the first American millionaires acted 100 years ago. Yeah, all these Machiavellian characters like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Watsons and so on. They were also not known as great team players, but rather as the leaders of a pack of outstanding and successful individualistic players.

Klaus Zaugg is the hockey editor of the Swiss newspaper BLICK and is one of four international columnists that will contribute to IHWC.NET.

Here is an excellent documentary done by the some swedens TV station about the "Red Machine", lots of great and unique footage.
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=6885&a=203894

[EvanL]

Russian players arent physical enough. they have skills, tons of it, but they dont hit. And thats what hinders them.

[Russian Texan]

Russian players arent physical enough. they have skills, tons of it, but they dont hit. And thats what hinders them.

It didn't hinder them back in 60's, 70's, 80's and early 90's.

Soviet/Russian school of hockey relies on technic skills, finess and combinations, it was never meant to be physical. It's just like in boxing: european fighters are mostly finess while North American fighters are pure brute strength, with the rare exception.
I remember when soviet team went on a tour in US and Canada to play against pros, soviet TV commentator said after seeing the way pros were playing: "We don't need this kind of hockey", he was reffering to the extremely physical style of the canadian and american pro players.
Russian skill easily won the series against brute physical force of the pros.
It was great for propaganda too :lol:

One of the Russian national team's key problems is - too many NHL players, who are invited because of their names and not the skill. The do not play Russian hockey, they play NHL hockey and when they get on a national team thay are trying to play the way which is completely alien to their Russian Super League teammates.
So what you get is - one part of the team is trying to play "technical/finess hockey" and the second half wants to do power shots and fight/force their way through the defences, the result is disaster...
Basically it was observed and noted, in Russia, that playing in the NHL decreases overall skill level and increases the bank account.
Ones Russia stops inviting NHLers, adjusts its home league schedule according to the international competition schedule - so players can have some rest in between and maybe train together for a month or so, Russia will be dominating again but not till then...

I'd say either Czechoslovakia or Slovakia, Sweden - third.