As to the endless selection criticisms, I am rather sick and tired of those fans who really seem to think that they would be better coaches than our top professionals. It is kind of Comic Book Guy besserwisserism. If it were so easy and selfevident then the fans would be there celebrating championships every year instead of having no responsibility and no risk in their anynomous posts on the net.
As is the custom on the moment of defeat, we have five million armchair coaches who would have made better picks than our actual one.
But let's see if that really would have been the case...
Goalies: I'm sure the nation agrees we had the right trio out there. Maybe somebody wants to nag about not having Koskinen there, but what difference does it make when Rinne is going to play all the games he can anyway?
Defense: Ristolainen was the hot potato. However, most people called for Mäntylä's head before the games, when the real issues were with Jaakola and Ohtamaa. So we likely wouldn't have seen any better play if the fans had had their way, because those two would still have been out there.
Forwards, centres: Before the games, we really had no better ones available. If there had been, Kontiola and Immonen should have gone out the door, but when your options are limited to players like Hirschovits, I.Filppula and Mika Niemi, you need some serious hindsight to say they would have been better picks.
Forwards, wingers: Here we can have a legitimate debate. Should Palola and/or Salminen have made it, instead of Louhivaara or Pesonen? Maybe. Ruutu, Pihlström and Aaltonen were subpar, but they were among the consensus picks, so bringing them up here is more hindsight. However, if we had had Palola/Salminen out there, their role could have been diminished so it may have lead to improved quality of play.
To sum things up - if we want to criticize, we can criticize Jalonen for some questionable picks to play wing. Other than that, he really had enough foresight to pick the best team available to him, because the parts the fans would have replaced would not have been the right ones, still leaving some bad apples in.