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Sensational progress of Slovakia among the best four of the Olympic tournament in Beijing. After defeating the Americans in the 3: 2 quarterfinals after the raids, Craig Ramsay’s charges are probably the least popular rival – Finland.
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One of the biggest favorites of the entire tournament has an extremely experienced team. They are the oldest in the tournament with an average age of 30.44 years. Slovaks, on the other hand, have the second youngest team with an average age of 26.44 years.
Finland’s youngest player is Hannes Björninen. He is 26 years old and was born on October 19, 1995. Slovakia has up to nine younger hockey players from him, three of them still in the U20 category. For example, team leader Peter Cehlárik is only a few days older than Hannes Björninen.
Slovakia also met Finland in the first match of the tournament in the basic group, when the team from Northern Europe clearly dominated, winning 6: 2. The Slovaks did not succeed in the duel and received most of the goals after mistakes and renumbering. The Finns then defeated Latvia 3: 1 and Sweden 4: 3 after extra time. They advanced directly to the quarterfinals, in which they defeated Slovakia. Who took care of it?
Goalkeepers
He caught against the Slovaks in the first match and got a chance in the next two. Harri Säteri he should also stand between the three poles in the semifinal match. Of our hockey players, only Juraj Slafkovský overcame him, twice. In total, he caught 31 of 33 shots.
He was also in the goal in another match against Latvia, he collected only once and helped the Finns to win 3: 1. He defeated the Swedes in a 4: 3 triumph after extra time Juho Olkinuora, but Sätteri returned to an important quarterfinal duel with Switzerland and significantly helped his team win. Out of 34 attempts, he released only one.
At the championship, he has a very good success rate of 95.40 percent of interventions. However, it is still less than our goalkeeper Patrik Rybár with 95.65 percent success.
Säteri is the goalkeeper of Sibiru Novosibirsk. Olkinuora catches for Metallurg Magnitogorsk.
Harri Säteri collects a goal from Slovakia.
Source: TASR
Defenders
The first defensive pair consists of an experienced 36-year-old Juuso Hietanen and eight years younger Mikko Lehtonen. The latter has gold from the World Cup and a year ago he also played in the NHL, now he works in St. Petersburg. Hietanen hung a bronze in Sochi and has two silver medals from the World Cup, he is the team’s oldest defender. Together they are the champions of the championship in the table plus or minus, where they have up to seven points.
Lehtonen collected four points in the tournament for one goal and three assists and is the most productive defender of the tournament, he also received one assistance in a duel with the Slovaks. Hietanen has two assistants.
The other couple form Petteri Lindbohm a Sami Vatanen. They both played in the NHL, Vatanen even played over 500 games in it and came to Europe, specifically to Switzerland, only this year. He has bronze from Sochi on his account. He scored 226 points in the profile and has already scored 33 points in 29 duels this season.
Lindbohm looked at the NHL for 40 duels, but was gaining success on the national team. In 2019 he won gold in Bratislava, last year silver. They do not thrive in points in the tournament, they have one or two assists.
The biggest threat and the most difficult will be to go through the first defensive pair, but the others do not give the Slovaks anything for free.
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Attackers
After the first match, the Slovak defense will certainly pay close attention, especially to Sakari Manninenawho shot the hat-trick. Ufy’s attacker added three more assists in other duels. In the first attack, he plays with Markus Granlund a Teemu Hartikainenom, together they form the first attack of Ufa. Hartikainen has 2 + 4 in the tournament and Granlund 0 + 1.
The team’s most famous name is in the second attack. He is probably familiar to every hockey fan Valtteri Filppula – 1,222 matches in NHL and Stanley Cup. He brings a lot of experience and still great quality to the team. He played in the NHL last season, and is currently working in Switzerland. In the attack he plays with Harrim Pesonenom a Iirom Pakarinen. Pakarinen is particularly successful, scoring three goals.
There are other well-known names in the front rows. Leo Komarov has over 500 NHL games, two Gagarin cups, gold and 2x silver from the World Cup or bronze from the Olympics. The former assistant captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs is really rich.
He has not played against the Slovaks yet, but now the two-meter field and the captain of the world champions from Bratislava will start. Marko Anttilascored twice in three duels.
Matches with Slovakia
In the fight for precious metals, we also shot with Finland in Vancouver 2010. In the match for 3rd place, we lost 3: 5. Despite the fact that we won 3: 1 by two thirds. Since then, we have met them eight times at the World Championships and we have recorded eight losses. We also lost the aforementioned first duel at this Olympics.
The last time we beat them in a competition match was at the World Championships in 2004. At the time of this match, Juraj Slafkovský was only 29 and Šimon Nemec was 73 days old.
