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Why is Finland underrated year in year out

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llwyd said:
Well, this is bit like Ireland and England (though far less serious historically as the Swedish times were really rather good considering all realistic alternatives and we were actually treated like an organic part of the realm, participating in Riksdags etc). It is also similar in the sense that in the colonized country the feelings run much more intense - Swedes don't know much anything about Finland (or about their own imperial history in general) but are very positive about us and pretty automatically support Finland if they themselves have been eliminated.

Luckily the younger generations in Finland are largely free of this inferiority complex and see Sweden like just another Nordic welfare state, rather boring obviously but as a good place to live. Of course the "true" Finns (our populist right-wing movement) think that Sweden is an islamizicing hellhole, but so do Sverige Democrats too.
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VERY few swedes support Finland whatever the circumstances.
 
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llwyd said:
We are habitually overlooked basically because on paper we rarely if ever are among the top 2 or 3 favourites. And for some weird reason it doesn't seem to register that we almost invariably play much, much better as a team than our paper depth would indicate. We have skill, speed, discipline and grit - and are a very tough and unpleasant opponent in best of one elimination games. We are basically a good and competitive dark horse candidate every year.
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This is a great description of Finland.
Interesting to read the Swede-Finn nationalists in here. But what's the point? Both are great hockey countries. Sweden has a history of being dominant geopolitically but those days are mostly over.
 
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Swecfes are one of the classiest people on this board. There is so exceptions but everyone has those. Finns definitely are one of the worst, so I don't know if it gets worse when we win or when we lose.. even though this WJC tournament felt a bit different and I saw a lot of good behaviour and class from Finns as well. Maybe we have finally learned.
 
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MiroPRKL said:
That's a fiesty roster, i'd love to see that if world cup ever decides to go gimmick teams why not make a team nordic?
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Team Nordic would be interesting. Any danes or norwegians to throw in the mix? Ehlers would probably fit on roster at least.
Could be a very competitive team indeed.
 
I have no idea. Even in our media, lots still say that we come to the worlds/juniors as underdogs, weird.
- we are never considered as the favorites to win the gold, yet we supposedly over achieve every time

We have the best coaches in the world and training methods
One of the better junior programs
We have lots of success in recent years, past 10 years, in both men and juniors
 
Anyone who underestimates Finnish sisu and fighting spirit does so at their own peril.

Love their burning desire to compete and never quit. I deeply admire those character in people and hockey teams as a Canadian.

Finns are as passionate about hockey as any country in the world.
 
Eye of Ra said:
especially jukka jalonen. how long is his contract with the national team?
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Until 2022, with NHL/NA-clause.
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Answer to this threads question, Finland never is never the strongest team on paper. But when Finland gets one of our best coaches behind the bench, then it doesn't matter how the team looks on paper. Erkka Westerlund, Jukka Jalonen, Kari Jalonen and the new breed Antti Pennanen, Mikko Manner, Jussi Ahokas and Tommi Niemelä, Finland has best coaches in hockey.

Sochi 2014, Minsk 2014 and Bratislava 2019 are best shows of finnish coaching ability. In Sochi Finland won the bronze with 3 centers that played in Europe, only center from NHL was 36-year old Olli Jokinen. Barkov was in the team, but he was still a kid and he was injured after 3 games.
Just think if Erkka "The Wizard" Westerlund had Saku Koivu and Mikko Koivu & Valtteri Filppula in their prime in the team, Finland would have won the gold medal.

In Minsk, Finland had one of worst rosters ever. Even the media in Finland was saying that "we be lucky, if we won't relegate this year". But i had no problems, because i knew Erkka is behind the bench and he will turn shit in to gold. And it wasn't very far away, Russians only won the gold with help from the referees. Malkin cross-checked Haula to the head, no penalty. And Finland got truck load of penalties through out the game for nothing. Here's the clip from the gold medal game, that shows the unjust of that game.


Everybody knows the Bratislava 2019 story. But i have to say that it was a shame, that Kari Jalonen didn't coach Finland in the 2016 World Cup. Results would have been different than it was under Lauri "micro management" Marjamäki & Kalle "poster equivalent" Kaskinen(team gave him that name, since he only hanged posters on the walls and didn't do anything else)
 
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In WJC tournaments Finland rarely has a ton of first rounders and sexy prospects in their lineup, which is why it is easy to underrate them on paper. Like there were two first rounders on the roster this year and a couple of yet undrafted players who could go in first round. It is not exciting lineup oozing with talent. There are a couple of very potential players, but overall they can't deke their way through the ice and score highlight reel goals every night. It is not as skilled lineup as some other top national teams, but they played like a team, which makes up for the lack of elite talent.

Also, there are always some unknown players who people look at and think "I don't know who that is, that team must be bad as they have to have those type of players". A lot of times those guys are just role players for bottom line roles and their job is to play energy or defence role and not be a star. They go out there, suffocate opponent's offence for half a minute and go back to their bench and the coach taps on their back for not allowing other team to score. That's their job. It is not sexy, but if they do their job and the top guys of the team do the scoring, it is a winning recipe. That is teamwork.
 
Some of those outside top 4 bad years can be attributed to coaching. The hockey federation's head coaching choices for U20 have been a really mixed bag. They've chosen the top coach ever to come out of this country and graduated U18 coach to U20, but then they have also given the job for an inexperienced ex-player (twice) and old guard coaches totally unsuitable for coaching young players.

There was even the one relegation round appearance which lead to a mid-tournament head coach firing (2017). Coincidentally the fired head coach was one of the worst choices.

After the current deal (2021-22) I expect them to pick some fool again. A good choice and then an inexplainably bad choice has been the pattern. It has been pretty frustrating to follow, because the player material has been pretty consistent for many years.
 
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To Finland coaching is more important than to some other countries maybe. We usually don't have the best players, so system and teamplay are more important and that's where the coach comes in. Most of our bad performances are due to bad coaching. Usual pattern for U20 has been a good coach, followed by a bad one and then a good coach again.
 
They have overachieved big time in some resent tournaments. Also, they have some real good top end talent right now and some coming up. Thats good. On paper though, during the last 15 years, they have been clearly behind the top 4 teams. They are concidered to be in the big 5 simply because they have the ability to win tournaments in a good year.

In some tournaments Finland slay everyone on pure will I think. I mean, a team of mostly non NHL players get a chance to prove themself against the best players in the world and become national heroes. They will be 10 times more motivated than a team of players that just missed the playoffs and/or just got knocked out of the stanly cup and are dead tired and maybe even jetlagged. Remember too that NHL players at this point have played 80+ games while players from european leagues maybe have 50-60 matches with a less hectic schedule.

In WJC they win a lot of times by relying on a hot line and good work ethic on the other lines. They usually have very good role-players and smart coaches. They have a gameplan and they stick with it. Its really hard to play against a team that relentlessly put hard preassure on the other team. Sometimes you can see the lesser teams doing the same with some success like Germany and Switzerland or even Latvia or Slovakia. Usually they look good in 2 periods and then get too tired to keep it up in the third. Finland is doing the same but with more skill and better structure. They are scary to face every time, even with less stellar teams on paper.
 
snu22fint said:
They have overachieved big time in some resent tournaments. Also, they have some real good top end talent right now and some coming up. Thats good. On paper though, during the last 15 years, they have been clearly behind the top 4 teams. They are concidered to be in the big 5 simply because they have the ability to win tournaments in a good year.

In some tournaments Finland slay everyone on pure will I think. I mean, a team of mostly non NHL players get a chance to prove themself against the best players in the world and become national heroes. They will be 10 times more motivated than a team of players that just missed the playoffs and/or just got knocked out of the stanly cup and are dead tired and maybe even jetlagged. Remember too that NHL players at this point have played 80+ games while players from european leagues maybe have 50-60 matches with a less hectic schedule.

In WJC they win a lot of times by relying on a hot line and good work ethic on the other lines. They usually have very good role-players and smart coaches. They have a gameplan and they stick with it. Its really hard to play against a team that relentlessly put hard preassure on the other team. Sometimes you can see the lesser teams doing the same with some success like Germany and Switzerland or even Latvia or Slovakia. Usually they look good in 2 periods and then get too tired to keep it up in the third. Finland is doing the same but with more skill and better structure. They are scary to face every time, even with less stellar teams on paper.
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Yes european players are usually higher motivated but this does not explain why the Finns in best on best torunaments are very competitive too. In WJC they won this because their talent pool is beeing bigger than in the first decade of 21 century.
 
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