WC: 2017 Team Finland

[FiLe]

I'm only a mere fan but I think he blows and so do the experts.

Right. Anonymous "experts" agree with you.

I always liked J.Jalonen.

And because of this, you think he was never really reviled? Trust me, he was. There was a choir of chicken littles calling for his head, using awfully similar arguments as people do now with Marjamäki, 'til 2011 changed everything.

I'm not trying to say Marjamäki has been a shining specimen thus far. What I'm saying is that he hasn't yet done enough to deserve all the asterisks flung his way. And neither have people who have a more moderate opinion of him than you, please remember that too.

I don't think Marjamäki will do any changes to the second line. I didn't see that much wrong with it and they did the game winning goal. Things can always get worse when making changes. Don't forget that.

The GWG was done by a special PP unit that had Aho instead of Pihlström.

But I don't think Marjamäki will touch it either unless we suddenly acquire a merited centre from somewhere. At least yet.

 

[Rillijuti]

Powerplay1

        Kemppainen
           Pyörälä
Aaltonen            Filppula
            Honka

Powerplay2

                     Rantanen
           Savinainen
Lajunen                   Aho
             Hietanen

is this how the pp units was and if not, can you tell me the right ones?

 

[FiLe]

is this how the pp units was and if not, can you tell me the right ones?

There actually seemed to be no stable PP units. I also noticed M.Aaltonen out there at one point (this was during the 5-on-3 though, IIRC), and sometimes Aho was clearly pulling a double shift.

I think rather than sticking with two stone-set units, Marjamäki was mixin' n' matchin' somewhat, to ride the hot hands. At least that's something we all should commend him for. Those you penned out seemed to be the rough basis for 'em though.

 

[Kardi]

How did Rantanen look??

 

[Raimo Sillanpää]

Right. Anonymous "experts" agree with you.

And because of this, you think he was never really reviled? Trust me, he was. There was a choir of chicken littles calling for his head, using awfully similar arguments as people do now with Marjamäki, 'til 2011 changed everything.

I'm not trying to say Marjamäki has been a shining specimen thus far. What I'm saying is that he hasn't yet done enough to deserve all the asterisks flung his way. And neither have people who have a more moderate opinion of him than you, please remember that too.

There is a difference with Jalonen.
Jalonen got HPK to 5 bronzes before becoming the first small town team to win SM-Liiga since really long time ago. Marjamäki inherited a champion Kärpät team and kept it together, his CV isn't as strong.
They say it is, we're told Marjamäki is the next great thing but is he really?
Jalonens early national teams all looked to be getting it, I remember Vancouver 2010 especially. NHL-clique complained about the coach, Selänne was especially dismissive, saying he, Koivu and Lehtinen did their own thing and ignored the coach - their line sucked. Younger players who followed system shone.

But Jalonens teams always looked like they had an idea, some implementation struggles. Marjamäkis team however seems lost, Bar yesterdays first 10 minutes.

 

[MMANumminen]

Marjamäki has his system and it is difficult to success when the players don't buy it. It is only good that we don't have many ego-centric NHL players to cancer the team

 

[Ippenator]

Losses haven't even been the biggest problem. Not scoring any goals and just flat out looking like a beer league team is the real culprit behind Marjamäki hate.

This is exactly how I see it. His playing style makes his teams look like they are constantly on somekind of handbreak mode. It's exactly how horribly passive, slow and just standing around his teams and players look like. And the offence lacks so much creativity, that it hurts my head to be so frustrated with watching Finland play.

To me it is strange that someone would still want to so much defend Marjamäki. Saunabuddies or something like that?

 

[FiLe]

But Jalonens teams always looked like they had an idea, some implementation struggles. Marjamäkis team however seems lost, Bar yesterdays first 10 minutes.

Looks like hindsight's 20/20 with Jalonen. When he started as the NT bench boss, he was very much called the "oppressive coach who kills the game". Oh, the constant ridicules of his trademark slow starts and all that. And tell you what, they may not have been entirely unfounded. But JJ got better.

My reason to give Marjamäki a pass for now is, simply put, this: While he's got some rough edges, we haven't yet had enough of a sample to say whether he's willing to shave those off or no. It's far too early to say based on the World Cup and and a bunch of meaningless EHT games. If this was some old, stale coach like Jortikka or Rautakorpi, I wouldn't hold much hope. But Marjamäki is still young. His current struggles may be because he perhaps got what is arguably the most demanding job in the world of sports a tad too soon.

You can't turn back the clock - what is old and stale won't improve. But what is raw may yet become ripe and tasty. Yee of short memories and even shorter foresights would do good to remember at least that.

 

[FiLe]

No line changes in today's practice. Looks like Pulju will still be fiddling his thumbs.

 

[BB88]

Marjamaki keeps being awesome.

 

[ijuka]

Marjamäki's system is way too slow and weak to forechecking. We'll see, I bet that the team will lose to some really really weak country just because they forecheck hard. I'm guessing it'll be Slovenia that'll defeat Finland and cause a national crisis.

 

[DoubleGold]

Marjamäki's system is way too slow and weak to forechecking. We'll see, I bet that the team will lose to some really really weak country just because they forecheck hard. I'm guessing it'll be Slovenia that'll defeat Finland and cause a national crisis.

At this point I'm hoping that some weakling country defeats Finland. Would accelerate the process of getting rid of him.

 

[Hidden]

Marjamäki inherited a champion Kärpät team and kept it together, his CV isn't as strong.
They say it is, we're told Marjamäki is the next great thing but is he really?

I don't think Marjamäki, as he is now, is the "next great thing", personally I actually expect most from Karri Kivi as of our "young" coaches goes and think that he's highly underrated.
Kivi isn't much of a regular season coach, seems to always struggle there bit, but when playoffs/tournament begins he seems to be golden and out coaching opponents, as long as material difference isn't massive.
Even this years playoffs he and his Ilves was practically only ones to make Tappara really sweat for their moneys through the playoffs (nothing away from Kalpa though, they were pretty okay too), last game was just sad to watch because they were so dead after that 2+ OT game day before.

But this is just my personal opinion.

From tad older group, both Kari and Jukka Jalonen are pretty good in their own ways, but will they ever get further (aka next lvl) than they are now. Probably not.

 

[Mestaruus]

From tad older group, both Kari and Jukka Jalonen are pretty good in their own ways, but will they ever get further (aka next lvl) than they are now. Probably not.

I would welcome one of these as the head coach Westerlund, Kivi, Jukka Jalonen and Kari Jalonen. Not saying that Marjamäki will get fired any time soon or that it needs to happen but if it had to happen I'd choose one of those. Kari Jalonen just has the problem of probably burning bridges with Ristolainen and Markus Granlund, but other than that he's a good coach.

 

[FiLe]

Marjamäki obviously isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Only scenario where that wish would be a viable one is if this team somehow failed to make the QF. And even then, Liitto would probably think twice before pulling the trigger.

It's really not as easy as things were with Rautakorpi and the U20 team, because back then, 1. they already had Ahokas under contract, 2. he was present at the city, and 3. many players were familiar to him from the U18 NT.

It's easy to ***** and whine and say "anyone but Marjamäki", but the reality is that coaches who are both merited enough *and* available don't grow on trees. For example, all of the names Mestaruus mentioned are currently under club team contracts. So some kind of double role or expensive buyout would be required.

Of them, KJ would probably say no, because if he wanted to coach the Lions, he would still be their coach. Erkka (& Ufa) wouldn't probably agree to that kind of arrangement either. Ilves wouldn't give up Kivi for cheap, and having a rookie NT coach in a double role wouldn't be tenable.

Only one who might be able to handle the Lions as a part-time fire brigadier would be J.Jalonen.

Though there's one more name with the necessary pedigree, who might be fully available. Tapola. He's stepping down as Tappara's head coach to have a desk job in the same organization. But he hasn't previously rubbed shoulders with Liitto, which might raise the threshold a bit.


However, if we are to consider Marjamäki's successor when his tenure eventually comes to its natural end, Kivi does look like the obvious choice.

 

[Dris]

I don't think Marjamäki, as he is now, is the "next great thing", personally I actually expect most from Karri Kivi as of our "young" coaches goes and think that he's highly underrated.
Kivi isn't much of a regular season coach, seems to always struggle there bit, but when playoffs/tournament begins he seems to be golden and out coaching opponents, as long as material difference isn't massive.
Even this years playoffs he and his Ilves was practically only ones to make Tappara really sweat for their moneys through the playoffs (nothing away from Kalpa though, they were pretty okay too), last game was just sad to watch because they were so dead after that 2+ OT game day before.

But this is just my personal opinion.

From tad older group, both Kari and Jukka Jalonen are pretty good in their own ways, but will they ever get further (aka next lvl) than they are now. Probably not.

Agreed. Really good point. Marjamäki never has overachieved anything whereas there are some guys in Liiga that are consistently overlooked.

 

[Dris]

The game against Czech will give a clear indication of where the NT is at the moment. And looking at this week performances, it may get hairy from a finnish point of view

 

[FiLe]

There is ultimately only a single meter that decides the success of a coach. And it's not the coach's uppity personality, or that somebody thinks his game plan is boring or whatever.

The results. That's all that matters.

Either a coach a) gets some serious disaster to his name where a team majorly underperforms in a tournament, or b) his long-term results, while being adequate, still fall short of being wholly satisfactory (like constant QF exits).

Thus far, Marjamäki has exactly zero major disasters to his name (go ahead, name one, I dare you*) and he obviously hasn't been a coach long enough to evaluate his results long term. Those also happen to be the reasons why he still has my support. And for the record: Apart from the Finnish NT, I've never been a fan of any team he's coached.

*And if you can't, please shut up.

If Marjamäki fails to take the team out of the group stage here, that'd be a disaster, and the discussion of replacing him suddenly becomes topical. But that hasn't happened yet, and given some posters' oh-so-great track record of being right, I somehow don't think they're in possession of any crystal balls either.

If he makes the QF but exits there, that's coaching to spec, but not yet enough to evaluate his long term success. That result would mean he's earned another year to show if he can improve. (After that, we could talk about long term results.)

Anything more than that, and we can obviously say he's not going anywhere even in a year, if he so desires.

 

[elmaco]

There is ultimately only a single meter that decides the success of a coach. And it's not the coach's uppity personality, or that somebody thinks his game plan is boring or whatever.

The results. That's all that matters.

Either a coach a) gets some serious disaster to his name where a team majorly underperforms in a tournament, or b) his long-term results, while being adequate, still fall short of being wholly satisfactory (like constant QF exits).

Thus far, Marjamäki has exactly zero major disasters to his name (go ahead, name one, I dare you*) and he obviously hasn't been a coach long enough to evaluate his results long term. Those also happen to be the reasons why he still has my support. And for the record: Apart from the Finnish NT, I've never been a fan of any team he's coached.

*And if you can't, please shut up.

If Marjamäki fails to take the team out of the group stage here, that'd be a disaster, and the discussion of replacing him suddenly becomes topical. But that hasn't happened yet, and given some posters' oh-so-great track record of being right, I somehow don't think they're in possession of any crystal balls either.

If he makes the QF but exits there, that's coaching to spec, but not yet enough to evaluate his long term success. That result would mean he's earned another year to show if he can improve. (After that, we could talk about long term results.)

Anything more than that, and we can obviously say he's not going anywhere even in a year, if he so desires.

World Cup of Hockey ?

 

[FiLe]

World Cup of Hockey ?

Being 6th (not counting the gimmick teams) in a tournament that only featured the Big Six countries was hardly a major failure, especially when you weren't ranked much higher to begin with.

Not that it was a success either.

 

[DoubleGold]

Being 6th (not counting the gimmick teams) in a tournament that only featured the Big Six countries was hardly a major failure, especially when you weren't ranked much higher to begin with.

Not that it was a success either.

Yeah, as if only being able to score one measly goal isn't something that should be looked down upon. Granted, Finland wasn't as strong as the other major countries player wise, but that hasn't stopped us in the past.

It was the first NT tournament that Marjamäki coached, I'll give him that, but Finland was absolutely annihilated by other teams. Major failure.

 

[BB88]

Being 6th (not counting the gimmick teams) in a tournament that only featured the Big Six countries was hardly a major failure, especially when you weren't ranked much higher to begin with.

Not that it was a success either.

World Cup went as bad as it could have gone.
Score wise& game wise.

You really couldn't have done worse. Team Europe didn't have top2 roster on that tourney, they had one of the worst.

There should be no defending of that tourney, it was pure garbage.

 

[FiLe]

There should be no defending of that tourney, it was pure garbage.

I wasn't defending the World Cup. I said it wasn't a success.

But it wasn't a disaster resultwise. And results are all that matter. There are no style points in hockey.

 

[40oz]

Being 6th (not counting the gimmick teams) in a tournament that only featured the Big Six countries was hardly a major failure, especially when you weren't ranked much higher to begin with.

Not that it was a success either.

At very least I'd call that a big disappointment. They only scored one goal in the tournament (albeit only 3 games). But the national team was coming off a string of victories across a few different levels meant expectations were pretty high, but they really didn't put up a fight.

 

[illone84]

I wasn't defending the World Cup. I said it wasn't a success.

But it wasn't a disaster resultwise. And results are all that matter. There are no style points in hockey.

The reason the World Cup was a disaster wasn't because Finland finished last, it was because they scored 1 goal in 3 games.