i know im late to the party but why, oh why, was somppi not chosen?
who made these decisions? who?
who's making the decisions for finland?
do these people feel ashamed? do they look in the mirror every day and look away because they can't even look at themselves?
have they been fired/re-assigned/replaced?
it's funny because somppi's development exploded this year.
Ultimately the responsibility goes to head coach Jussi Ahokas, who had the final say in the team selections. Funny thing is that I called before the announcements that Somppi should be included in the team. But it wasn't unpopular opinion or anything. Good hockey guys like Steve Yzerman have noticed his development and Tampa's intention is to sign him to ELC. It was pretty obvious for everyone to see that the Finland's selected team had big flaws. Other notable omissions were Turkulainen, Luostarinen and Kotkaniemi.
The team was pretty much selected already in the Summer Showcase tournament. Already there was very odd selections like Innala, Jaaska, Moilanen... They wanted them to PK, but it was strange since Somppi, Luostarinen and Turkulainen could have done that and have done that well in their season and on top of that have been good scorers. There was very little turnover since in the showcase selections compared to the main tournament. Maybe they wanted to create chemistry early in the summer and not ruin that with new players. That means what happened early in this season didn't matter. The displays were given much earlier and that was enough to them. But on the other hand that it was odd that they brought in Kupari who had not shown a lot and was not included in the previous teams. It was very strange. It was not super surprising or shocking that the tournament was a big flop in my opinion. The head coach will stay the same for next year's tournament, which is a bit questionable.