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Team Finland WC 2023

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Artorius Horus T said:
Suomela been like a tourist in this game so far, after two.

Pesonen and Kapanen play well together, I think Suomela's foot speed hurts his game at international level.

#eijatkoon
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yep one of the reasons why karlqvist got cut from team Sweden, who is suomelas linemate in Oskarshamn, they both dominate in league, but international tournaments is different
 
Have we had a SHL player succeed on a scoring line since Kallio?

Sometimes it does seem that what it takes for a Finn to score in Sweden is either intensity or just being really irrational (avig) with the puck.
 
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Not the greatest game despite the win. Larmi was great and Pesonen-Kapanen was working. Suomela was bad and i was expecting more from Armia too. Manninen and Granlund looked a bit lost without Härski. Anyone know why he didn't play?
 
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FiLe said:
And it'd be nice to know what was the deal with Välimäki, as he'd be exactly what the doctor ordered. He's of course a pipe dream at this stage, but there were some early reports about him expressing interest, and then nothing.
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I'm just guessing here, so my guess is that Välimäki simply didn't convince Jalonen enough and Jalonen thought that some his familiars from Europe are about same level. I like Välimäki personally, but maybe Jalonen wants to see another season of him. Also another possibility coud've been that Lehtinen with his good connections to Dallas already got green light many weeks ago from maybe all of the Dallas defenders and they thought that Dallas could be eliminated on round 1 and if not on round 1, then maybe round 2.

Also they could've been thinking about having Vatanen in, but that injury happened in the Swiss league finals. At this point it was perhaps too late to ask Välimäki. Another reason I have is that, it's very hard to cut NHL players from the camp. Once an NHL player joins the camp they usually don't get cut, so for that reason maybe Välimäki was a borderline case for Jalonen and they thought that it's better to not invite him this time and not burn bridges with the player (sort of what happened with Ristolainen when Gary Jalonen was the coach and cut him).

It would also be interesting to know what happened with Jokiharju.
 
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The most interesting question to me now is that why did Jalonen put Lammikko to wing. If he is planning to put him to the middle, he wouldn't do something like this now. He would instead want to see which players could have chemistry with Lammikko when Lammikko is a center.

I thought about this and I got few theories on this. I think that Jalonen is going cut Lammikko out of the roster. In this case Jalonen isn't looking at season stats. He is simply not impressed about Lammikko on the practice camp & practice games.

So who would replace Lammikko as a center? We got 3 locked centers. Björninen, Manninen and Suomela. I got 3 options what Jalonen might be thinking about:

1. Sallinen will be the center of the 3rd line. A sign of this happening would be that Sallinen plays as a center in the next EHT game. I think this is what most likely will happen.

2. Rantanen as center. Second likeliest scenario.

3. Ruohomaa as a center. So Jalonen has possibly been considering Ruohomaa higher than many here thought even before the Czech game. I also wasn't a big Ruohomaa believer. Now Ruohomaa had a pretty good showing in that game vs Czech, which raised his stocks even more.
 
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Mestaruus said:
The most interesting question to me now is that why did Jalonen put Lammikko to wing. If he is planning to put him to the middle, he wouldn't do something like this now. He would instead want to see which players could have chemistry with Lammikko when Lammikko is a center.

I thought about this and I got few theories on this. I think that Jalonen is going cut Lammikko out of the roster. In this case Jalonen isn't looking at season stats. He is simply not impressed about Lammikko on the practice camp & practice games.

So who would replace Lammikko as a center? We got 3 locked centers. Björninen, Manninen and Suomela. I got 3 options what Jalonen might be thinking about:

1. Sallinen will be the center of the 3rd line. A sign of this happening would be that Sallinen plays as a center in the next EHT game. I think this is what most likely will happen.

2. Rantanen as center. Second likeliest scenario.

3. Ruohomaa as a center. So Jalonen has possibly been considering Ruohomaa higher than many here thought even before the Czech game. I also wasn't a big Ruohomaa believer. Now Ruohomaa had a pretty good showing in that game vs Czech, which raised his stocks even more.
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Jalonen played Lundell on the wing to try Ruotsalainen in the middle. He is looking at extremely specific stats to build his lines. I don't think he sees Lammikko as a winger and we shouldn't read too much into it.

I think Sallinen is the odd one out. Ruohomaa has some untapped offense whilst Sallinen kills anything that looks like constructive offensive play. I can't but help to think about Toni Sihvonen when I see him..
 
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mattihp said:
Jalonen played Lundell on the wing to try Ruotsalainen in the middle. He is looking at extremely specific stats to build his lines. I don't think he sees Lammikko as a winger and we shouldn't read too much into it.

I think Sallinen is the odd one out. Ruohomaa has some untapped offense whilst Sallinen kills anything that looks like constructive offensive play. I can't but help to think about Toni Sihvonen when I see him..
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I think you understood me wrong a little bit. I meant that Jalonen will cut Lammikko out of the roster completely. He won't put Lammikko to wing in the WHC. He's given up on Lammikko as a center for this season, but he is still giving Lammikko a chance in this EHT as a winger. So Lammikko is battling for a winger spot and he will lose that battle, because we have so many good winger options now. Not necessarily my preference to cut Lammikko, but I think that's what's going on now if I'd have to guess. Sallinen has been ahead of Lammikko in his mind all this time. Whether that is at center or wing, he got Sallinen ahead of Lammikko, but we'll see. First sign of this would be if Sallinen plays the center position instead of wing position in the next game. Lammikko still has some kind of chance if injuries happen during the EHT tournament on certain players or if he plays godlike in the game(s) he got left in the EHT tournament.
 
If Laine plays. MaG out, Pesonen in. To me Pesonen has now passed MaG in the hierarchy. The battle has been close until today.

Rantanen-Suomela-Laine
Kakko-Manninen-Hartikainen
Pesonen-Sallinen-Kapanen
Armia-Björninen-Anttila

...and the second scenario on the bottom. If Laine won't play, MaG has a spot. Kapanen as a rightie will take Laine's spot in that line instead of Kakko. Also another reason for that is that Suomela & Kapanen have been playing 3 games together now and they have chemistry. Kakko will join a PP unit as a 4th forward and Pesonen joins another PP unit as a 4th forward. Sallinen + Armia will form a PK pair.

Rantanen-Suomela-Kapanen
MaG-Manninen-Hartikainen
Pesonen-Sallinen-Kakko
Armia-Björninen-Anttila
 
This is OT and I apologize in advance for this but i feel a moral obligation to warn any tappara fans that might be in here. Grönborg is absolutely horrible, do not believe the hype.
 
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Mestaruus said:
The most interesting question to me now is that why did Jalonen put Lammikko to wing. If he is planning to put him to the middle, he wouldn't do something like this now. He would instead want to see which players could have chemistry with Lammikko when Lammikko is a center.

I thought about this and I got few theories on this. I think that Jalonen is going cut Lammikko out of the roster. In this case Jalonen isn't looking at season stats. He is simply not impressed about Lammikko on the practice camp & practice games.

So who would replace Lammikko as a center? We got 3 locked centers. Björninen, Manninen and Suomela. I got 3 options what Jalonen might be thinking about:

1. Sallinen will be the center of the 3rd line. A sign of this happening would be that Sallinen plays as a center in the next EHT game. I think this is what most likely will happen.

2. Rantanen as center. Second likeliest scenario.

3. Ruohomaa as a center. So Jalonen has possibly been considering Ruohomaa higher than many here thought even before the Czech game. I also wasn't a big Ruohomaa believer. Now Ruohomaa had a pretty good showing in that game vs Czech, which raised his stocks even more.
Click to expand...

Option 2 seems most likely to me.
 
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Mestaruus said:
I'm just guessing here, so my guess is that Välimäki simply didn't convince Jalonen enough and Jalonen thought that some his familiars from Europe are about same level. I like Välimäki personally, but maybe Jalonen wants to see another season of him. Also another possibility coud've been that Lehtinen with his good connections to Dallas already got green light many weeks ago from maybe all of the Dallas defenders and they thought that Dallas could be eliminated on round 1 and if not on round 1, then maybe round 2.
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I don't really buy these explanations, as Välimäki is not exactly an unseasoned player anymore, and also relying on getting players from a series where Dallas was, after all, the favorite would be massively amateurish. Also, there would have been ample time to integrate Välimäki to the team by having him attend the camp.

So, it was probably something to do with Välimäki himself that he couldn't join. And despite being a good player, he's not one of our top shelf guys, so Iltis didn't bother asking him either, as they usually do.

---

Regarding the game vs. the Czechs, I'm not going to say who should make the final team and who shouldn't based on a single night's performance, especially regarding players who have already attended the camp for a while. (And neither probably will Jalonen.) Furthermore, players who figure they're already in the final team might not give it a 100% because they're trying to avoid injuries.

But based on that longer-term performance, I say that it'll be very difficult to cut Pesonen. Which doesn't help with the winger logjam. So, Rantanen at center looks increasingly likely.

But having too many quality forwards is just a positive problem to have. Right now, the state of our defense is far more concerning. I agree that certain names' performances have been less than stellar. But do we have better options? It's easy to say that X or Y shouldn't make it, but who's gonna replace them? A bag of pucks? Crossing your hands and praying for Dallas to get eliminated is not the answer either. So, when the final roster is released, it's undoubtedly going to feature names that's not gonna make some commenters happy.
 
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Mestaruus said:
If Laine plays. MaG out, Pesonen in. To me Pesonen has now passed MaG in the hierarchy. The battle has been close until today.

Rantanen-Suomela-Laine
Kakko-Manninen-Hartikainen
Pesonen-Sallinen-Kapanen
Armia-Björninen-Anttila

...and the second scenario on the bottom. If Laine won't play, MaG has a spot. Kapanen as a rightie will take Laine's spot in that line instead of Kakko. Also another reason for that is that Suomela & Kapanen have been playing 3 games together now and they have chemistry. Kakko will join a PP unit as a 4th forward and Pesonen joins another PP unit as a 4th forward. Sallinen + Armia will form a PK pair.

Rantanen-Suomela-Kapanen
MaG-Manninen-Hartikainen
Pesonen-Sallinen-Kakko
Armia-Björninen-Anttila
Click to expand...

is Suomela your favorite player? dude sucks, he should not be playing at the worlds and i'm very confident he will not
he was terrible yesterday, also he has never played at the worlds, Jalonen likes to give him shots at eht but he always
fails him.
 
Artorius Horus T said:
is Suomela your favorite player? dude sucks, he should not be playing at the worlds and i'm very confident he will not
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While I'm not as high on Suomela as Mestaruus is, the fact is that his chances are quite good, considering we don't have a ton of better options available.

Five centers are likely to make the final cut. Of the present team, Manninen and Björninen are locks, which means there are still three spots open. If Rantanen is slotted as a center, he will be one. The remaining two will be picked out of Suomela, Lammikko, Sallinen and Ruohomaa. And if Jalonen sees Rantanen more as a winger, then three out of those four will make it.

But if you have a ton of better options to suggest, we'd all like to hear them. I'm kinda drawing a blank at the moment, as Barkov and Hintz are still busy with their day jobs - and raising the dead is impossible, so we can't resurrect Mölli Keinonen.
 
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Probably not in the works but robin salo might be a good add as a puck mover now Islanders both nhl and ahl are out.

Checked and he has contract.

Doubt it happens but I d take him for this team.
 
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