I was satisfied with him. He was expected to be one of the leading forwards, and he did just that. Save for maybe the first 2 periods of the USA games, he was always creating chances.
WJC: Team Finland 2018 U20 WJC Roster Talk
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MrHeiskanen
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What didn't people like about Heiskanen? He moved the puck well, got it out of the zone and minimized mistakes. Exactly what he is supposed to do. Just because he didn't have a flashy dangle or big snipe (not the player he is) doesn't mean he was disappointing. Heiskanen is a very calm, keep it simple, player.
Past Considerations
Registered User
Your original post: http://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/139699825/ and then you posted that video apparently as an attempt to backup your firing demand.
Advanced stats are heavily against him on zone exits compared to all other D though. I'd say his best asset is his ability to break up plays with his stick and speed. His breakouts were pretty good but he was caught with a bad pass more than once. I don't think Valimaki and him worked well as partners, Valimaki can sometimes be an adventure in his own end.
MrHeiskanen
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Darryl Keeping on Twitter. Here are results of the last two games regarding zone exits. 4th best D both nights, although playing tougher competition than the Vaakanainen/Kotkansalo pairing.
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MrHeiskanen
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So I'm supposed to trust the stats of some 16 year old kid on Twitter who has him and his dog as the profile picture? I'm going to take the data with a big grain of salt.
In my opinion Finland was eliminated due to a number of issues, not just bad goaltending, or defending, or offense. None of them were overly bad, it was just that none of them were great either. If just one of the issues hadn't been there, it wouldn've been an easier time to finish top 4, or get a medal. But when they all happened simultaneously, this is the end-result.
Defense was overall decent - gave up more shots (130) than the other big nations, but not significantly so. Though it struck odd to me that a lot of them were high-quality chances, with opposing forwards left undefended in the slot or unhindered due to lack of physical play.
That also carries over to goaltending, Luukkonen wasn't great, he was slow and out of position at times, but he wasn't abysmal either, and a lot of it came down to the opponent getting easy shots from the slot. I've a feeling that if those hadn't happened, people wouldn't even complain about him. Still, would've wanted a look at Lehtinen, if for no other reason than to light a fire under Luukkonen.
Offense underperformed, but again it felt like it was due to lack of physicality. Finland generated a lot of shots (210, as many as Canada has generated with 5GP) but they often came from outside the slot, at the end of an attack when the puck-carrier was trying to get a rebound but noone was there to pick it up. Of course there was also the issues with finishing, with Tolvanen and Juolevi combining for 50 SOG and 2 goals - but you need world-class finishing anyway to score from those low-quality, outside the slot shots, and neither Juolevi or Tolvanen is known for that.
Overall it was an underwhelming effort. Part game plan's fault, part players' fault, part just poor luck.
Defense was overall decent - gave up more shots (130) than the other big nations, but not significantly so. Though it struck odd to me that a lot of them were high-quality chances, with opposing forwards left undefended in the slot or unhindered due to lack of physical play.
That also carries over to goaltending, Luukkonen wasn't great, he was slow and out of position at times, but he wasn't abysmal either, and a lot of it came down to the opponent getting easy shots from the slot. I've a feeling that if those hadn't happened, people wouldn't even complain about him. Still, would've wanted a look at Lehtinen, if for no other reason than to light a fire under Luukkonen.
Offense underperformed, but again it felt like it was due to lack of physicality. Finland generated a lot of shots (210, as many as Canada has generated with 5GP) but they often came from outside the slot, at the end of an attack when the puck-carrier was trying to get a rebound but noone was there to pick it up. Of course there was also the issues with finishing, with Tolvanen and Juolevi combining for 50 SOG and 2 goals - but you need world-class finishing anyway to score from those low-quality, outside the slot shots, and neither Juolevi or Tolvanen is known for that.
Overall it was an underwhelming effort. Part game plan's fault, part players' fault, part just poor luck.
Those numbers matched up with his play. He just wasn't that impressive. Of course you're not gonna like stats that show Mr. Heiskanen in a bad light. Take off your homer glasses and realize he had a disappointing tournament. Doesn't change the fact he's having an amazing season in Liiga.
kelsier
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It's still disgusting to think about how many empty netters the team missed during the 3 and a half periods. Was it Innanen, Räsänen and Vesalainen who somehow managed to miss the net while either being positioned straight in front or at Innala's case, right on the scoring slot. It felt like watching some game from the 90s where the players couldn't score to save their lifes. Ahokas was absolutely clueless on how to use his players. Where was the Heiskanen - Tolvanen tandem for instance? Instead of heavy first powerplay unit we get two ~equally good powerplay lines where neither provided any spectacular results, yet no real changes were made. Kuokkanen who provided 0 offence was on the ice every we needed a goal despite of piss poor performance and just killing every other play. What was most baffling is that although he was demoted from 1st to 2nd and at some point from 2nd to 3rd line, this was our go-to-guy when it mattered the most (hello Ahokas?!). Another veteran, Koivula, was absolutely uselesss and had no speed whatsoever to keep up vs better countries, leaving Heponiemi to figure out how to create offence on his own. Bringing in Kupari with fresh legs and energy just to bench him again didn't make much more sense. Yeah, Tolvanen and Heiskanen both where underwhelming but a team should always be built to have secondary scoring. This time we had we had only tertiary scoring in form of a fourth line. I've never seen material being wasted away as bad as this and instead of taking in the best available players we had these so called "role players" with a playbook from the 80s or 90s, where a player who couldn't fulfill the expected role, turns out entirely useless. Resulting into completely impotent second and third lines. Still annoys me that pretty much the only tournament I'm delighted to wait gets wasted away because incompetence by the people who are responsible of building it up.
Ahokas does not deserve a second year. This isn't the school where you learn how the coaching works. Give him another try another time when he is worthy. Next year someone else hopefully gets the reigns.
Ahokas does not deserve a second year. This isn't the school where you learn how the coaching works. Give him another try another time when he is worthy. Next year someone else hopefully gets the reigns.
I have to agree with this. Also Luukkonen wasn't as bad as it may seem.
Problem was the Centers. Only Räsänen and Koppanen was up to it. Ikonen was abysmal and I would have played Kupari. Kuokkanen was disappointing too. In a hindsight I don't understand why they didn't pick up Luostarinen.
bert
Registered User
Half the people interpreting these stats have never even played hockey. So tired of it. People need to use their eyes and actually understand the game. Everyone is an expert now that advanced stats are out.
Hockeyisl1fe
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- Dec 8, 2016
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If we trust the IIHF stats, during the QF OT the two forwards with most TOI were Kuokkanen 4:51 and Ikonen 4:35. Kuokkanen didn't score a single goal in the tournament, Ikonen "scored" one by losing a faceoff 100-0. If I was the coach they would not have been my two top choices, but then again I'm just a fan and Ahokas knows these guys very well, so maybe he saw something my untrained eye didn't catch.
Maukkis
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- Mar 16, 2016
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It only took these two posts to sum up my take on our biggest disappointments. I'll say this though - when it comes to Heiskanen, many might have expected him to be an insane difference maker, which he weren't, but his "basic" level of play was still quite high. Välimäki was just horrific, and unfortunately, his mistakes ended up costing us a lot of goals throughout the tournament. Kuokkanen was a total no-show; it baffles me how little offense he was capable of creating. The line change did not salvage much either.
Vesalainen, Juolevi and Jokiharju were my top 3 Finns. Tolvanen and Räsänen weren't too far behind either.
As a whole, they underachieved. The players who were brought in to score couldn't have bought a goal (Tolvanen, Vesalainen, Kuokkanen) despite generating a lot of shots, defense didn't make up for that and made too many mistakes, goaltender wasn't anything to write home about and the coach didn't even give the backup a chance, special teams were way below average, etc. I mean, I guess you could put the lack of scoring on the lack of natural centers, as only two of the lines were consistently visible and able to turn the game. The leading playmaker on the team was Tolvanen, and that's not the role he's at his best at, though I've to give him credit for giving it 100% and contributing to the offense even when he couldn't put the puck in the net.
It was a number of things that went wrong that combined into the result we got. If the team had gone more often into the slot and capitalized on their shots, we wouldn't be talking about this - Finland generated a tourney-high (so far, obviously) 210 shots. If they hadn't given up that many quality chances, we wouldn't be talking about this - Finland gave up more shots than anyone in the big 6, but not significantly so, it was more that they came consistently in the slot. If Luukkonen had been in beast-mode, we wouldn't be talking about this - he was shaky and out of position at times, but some of the goals can be pinned on defensive breakdowns and losing a man in the slot, when your goalie is average you have to be more careful about those. If PP and PK had worked, same thing - Finland had the most PP opportunities, and took the least penalties, they just couldn't get the special teams working. All these things happened at the same time, while nothing seemed to go right, and we get this result. It's a lot of "ifs" though, maybe they would've still been eliminated if things had gone the other way, who knows.
(All stats are IIHF at the time of Finland's elimination, with 5GP)
I'd say a combination of many things but mostly goaltending isn't what it used to be few yeas ago. Of the players to me Kuokkanen and maybe Ikonen were the biggest disappointments. These centers couldn't get their lines going which affected the wingers of those lines as well, while our #1 line's center Aapeli Räsänen and #4 lines' center Koppanen did good.
If Czech didn't tie that game 6on5 I got a feeling that Finland would've played their best game of the tournament in the semifinal against Canada as they underachieved the entire tournament and needed more time to grow.
If we are looking at individual skills or ability to win one-on-ones, Finns were just fine. Material was good and despite all the negatives, Finland generated enough scoring chances to be successful and there were shots which hit the post and crossbar in every match. Defense of course made some mistakes but that is something that is to be expected because we are talking about junior hockey after all. I think Finnish D was just fine compared to other big countries.
As mentioned before, Finland was unsuccessful because of multiple reasons. Some key players didn't perform as well as expected including our goalie, there were problems with scoring even from quality chances (kinda to be expected from Finns) and the team didn't respond quick enough to turnovers and transitions.
But to me, the biggest problem with Finns was in the tactical side. I actually think Finland tried to modify their game plan too much for the small rink. I don't know if it was the tactic or how the players executed the game plan but Finns seemed to be in a hurry all the time. Finland seemed to pass or carry the puck forward immediately or defender had the puck, defender either passed the puck or dumped the puck immediately when reaching the red line. It was rare to see pass from side to side and our skilled wingers weren't at their best when all the passes came directly from behind. This to me caused that when Finland tried to act quickly, it actually slowed Finland down and maybe as a result of this, the team wasn't prepared enough when losing the puck. All of these aspects are something that are pretty uncharacteristic for Finnish junior national teams.
Luukkonen could grow to become solid in a year. He was our U18 gold goalie after all. It does frustrate me though how everyone scores him from the 5-hole. It always feels like cheap/free goals when they score it that way. I wish he'd fix that in his game.
Razamanaz
Registered User
This ain't the end of the world for Finland hockey - quite the opposite. Believe it or not (but you'll believe it in years to come!).
Trust me.
The golden age has just begun.
Nowadays we (Finland) have defenders that can defend - and attack! - and that in the same player(s).
And who rather sooner than later will be NHL-players.
Upfront absolut no worries with lethal weapons such as Eeli Tolvanen leadin' the Finland troops ... and he will only be older and better!
Trust me.
The golden age has just begun.
Nowadays we (Finland) have defenders that can defend - and attack! - and that in the same player(s).
And who rather sooner than later will be NHL-players.
Upfront absolut no worries with lethal weapons such as Eeli Tolvanen leadin' the Finland troops ... and he will only be older and better!
Razamanaz
Registered User
Razamanaz
Registered User
Don't worry be happy Finland.
This is the (hockey-) generation who's gonna kick it for Finland.
Young men grow ya see - and the explosion among the men in Finland-defense is just tremendous!
Even Canada is chicken-shit compared to that!
More Finns backwards will be stars in the NHL than Canadians from this junior-tournament.
This is the (hockey-) generation who's gonna kick it for Finland.
Young men grow ya see - and the explosion among the men in Finland-defense is just tremendous!
Even Canada is chicken-shit compared to that!
More Finns backwards will be stars in the NHL than Canadians from this junior-tournament.
Brock Radunske
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