What has USA or Russia done to be better than Finland? Simply nothing. Finland has been the 3rd best hockey nation for a very long time.
This is something I've been thinking myself for a very long time, but haven't dared to say it aloud because I've been suspecting North American fans won't be logical about this.
But then again, Soviets did win Canada Cup in 1981 and USA did win World Cup in 1996 so maybe they still "count" and make them one of the "big boys", of which many here have referred Finland is not part of, because Finland hasn't won a best on best tournament ever. One thing to note in this this discussion is the sheer lack of numbers of these tournaments in ice hockey history.
And also by the logic of admission to the big boys club via a best on best win, Czechs are there too because of Nagano.
I honestly don't know if this logic is very good (a prime example is the Czech, are they really one of the big boys now?), but its not made up by me, but majority of Swedish and North American fans here on these forums.
I guess the main "issue" for Finns (the fans) here is that somehow, despite the fact that many Swedish/Canadian/American fans here respect Finland silently and aloud and many have said that after their team has dropped they'll root for Finland etc., we feel a small lack of respect for the Finnish hockey from the international crowd. And of course things like these matter. It can even hurt us a bit sometimes. How would Canadians feel if for some weird reason, despite everything they've won, Canada would be disrespected hockey nation amongst international community? I don't know how it could be possible, but that is the feeling we get.
After all, we are consistently winning the top three/four countries. Not necessarily all of the time of even most of the time, but consistently. Finland's win over USA or Russia is not something that really can be described as a "upset". Swiss or Slovak's win probably could be. Also like the OP listed, we are the most consistent medaler in the olympics, and it's not really a women's ice hockey -like situation, because all the other medalers vary greatly. And not all of them are bronzes, we have two runner ups two, World Cup 2004 and Olympics 2006.
The point is that we feel bad about not being counted as a real contender, despite we've been very close to the jackpot a couple of times and almost every time we are in the game for medals. Is it
really so that one win in a final would change the fact how good a hockey nation Finland is? Before the end horn sings, Finland's level as a hockey nation would be something, and after a lucky shootout shot against Canada suddenly, in a millisecond, Finland would rise to some other level as a best on best contender? Of course the perceived feeling of that moment would really be something, but as an objective analysis of the Finland's noteworthiness as a international hockey tournament contender?
I guess one thing that makes it even worse is the fact that yes, of course I admit that before every tournament, we are giving the other teams so much room ahead just when choosing who will play. We are lacking in stardom, that's definitely true. We are even lacking in the number of NHLers these days, something I really hate as a side notion. It
is true that if Canada would choose A-team, B-team, C-team and D-team, it's probably the D-team that would have names similar to the Finnish team this year. Really. Honestly. We are always the underdogs, always. But being the underdog does not mean you cannot be one of the bigs at the same time. We will always perform well, most outsider (non-Finns) would probably describe our performance as "overperforming" from tournament to tournament, but Finns know it's not really that. It would be that, if we were consistently sixth or seventh and suddenly we'd get a silver, then that would be overperforming. It's just tiring to every year fight against heavy star teams of Russia, Canada, USA and co. with the weapons we got, half of the time winning them and always after that being told to go back to cuddle with Switzerland and Slovakia.
It's also not like we are talking here about a sport that would have a 100-year history of best on best tournaments or something. We have 5 olympics, 5 Canada Cups, 2 World cups. 12 tournaments, 12 golds to be given to somebody. Finland hasn't been one of the first 12, but I honestly think anyone saying Finland will never win a hockey best on best tournament is blind from the inside.
Many Swedes like to say that Finns lack the capability of winning. I honestly don't think that's the issue either. We have won things, couple of times World Champs and a few of WCJ's. Our time will come in a best-on-best too. We will always start fighting against bad odds and we will never dominate the international hockey, but we will win from time to time.
Of course it also hurt when people on these boards claimed in masses that Finland plays anti-hockey, especially after the Canada-game. Fortunately, in the end, for me that's just a sign of lack of understanding the game by the sayer. And I'm not talking about one poster here, but at least a hundred of posts in FIN-CAN threads. First of all, there is a difference with playing defensively and playing anti hockey. Anti hockey means trapping between blue lines and making attacking impossible. Anti hockey means creating a stick jungle there and like that making it impossible to play organized hockey for either sides of the game. Finland never did that. Canada had the puck 75% of the time in Finland's defensive zone. What Finland did, was the core idea of Erkka Westerlund's ice hockey: we defended the center of the ice. Not meaning the area between the blue lines but the area in front of the net. The best places for shots. Why is it a bad thing that warrants media coverage with titles like "Let's hope we never see this FIN-CAN matchup in Olympics ever again" in North American web sites to play wisely and not play the game that opposing team wants but try to find your own strengths in the game? We don't want to make the game of FIN-CAN a sixty minute shootout/breakthrough game against Canada. Even if we have Rask, we would lose that game. What we did, we decided we will not go near the corners to wrestle with big, strong and heavy Canadian NHLers but keep their game in places where they can only get easy shots from bad angles and our goalie will take care of the rest.
The cleverest ice hockey people probably also saw that Finland didn't play against USA 100% the same way anymore. And I'm not saying this because 5-0, but because of the explicit fact that our D's played wide against USA, narrow against Canada. Implicitly the change could be seen in the increased amount of checking too (by forwards too).
Generally I'd say some people just have difficulties in seeing things from the right perspective, the bigger picture.
) **** happens, you will win something eventually. You will definately not have to wait as long as we (the Czechs) will
