U18: WJC 2019: Finland

[king89]

Despite all that, I have the feeling that this generation of players is perhaps too selfish and as soon as they play in the NHL, they are no longer interested in the national team.

It's not just this generation of players but this generation of kids. Sadly the truth.

 

[JLT]

Full game recap:

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

Finland's TOP3 players
Hatakka
Lundell
Taponen.

Who's brilliant brain fart was name Taponen TOP3 player of Finland's U18 WJC team this year.
This selection is a joke of century because Taponen was everything else than one of the best.
Should have been Puistola instead of sieve Taponen who can't catch pucks at all.

 

[Svedu]

Finland's TOP3 players
Hatakka
Lundell
Taponen.

Who's brilliant brain fart was name Taponen TOP3 player of Finland's U18 WJC team this year.
This selection is a joke of century because Taponen was everything else than one of the best.
Should have been Puistola instead of sieve Taponen who can't catch pucks at all.

Well the whole f*cking defense was a joke. Hatakka was not that good either. I would have chosen Aaltonen, Lundell and Petman or Puistola. Petman because he was the only one with Leevi who seemed to be working before the US scored the third and fourth goal.

Miettinen, Simontaival and other smallish players need to become much better skaters if they wan´t to compete in the big leagues in the future. Simontaival has some potential but if he can´t become faster or stronger he will "only" become a good player in the KHL.
Puistola needs to become much more dynamic, both skating and strength.
Saarela, oh my days that kid is overrated as hell in my opinion. Did not play one decent game in the whole tournament. At least for now, not even as good as his good-mediocre, better big brother Aleksi. He should get some motivation and a wake up call when he hits the summer training because this will not be enough in the future.
I understand why you are raging against the criticism towards Lundell. Ijuka and others are going a bit far. I had bigger hopes for him in this quarter but when the coaching is utter s*it it´s not that easy to be constructive and achieve something.
Pärssinen will not become an NHL´er, if he won´t have a rocket development that is. Agreed.
This tournament made question Kokkonen really much. I´m actually not sure he will make it to the NHL. Honestly, i think he will drop in the draft after his performances.
Heinola is the only D that could have a future in the NHL in my opinion.
Noor Kokkonen, noor Hatakka was even close to (at this moment) talents before them like Juolevi, Heiskanen, Jokiharju, Laaksonen, Vaakanainen.

A player like Myllylä would have probably been a much better fit in a fourth line than others?
Is Kallionkieli not better than some forwards in this underachieving team?
Hopefully Puutio, Sedoff and others can come further in their development than these defenders until next year. Has anyone here seen Roby Järventie or Oliver Suni play? Could you tell something about them.
2003 born players excites me a lot, Salminen, Lambert, Tammela, Tuomaala, Juusola Miettinen,
Hopefully Nikkanen has a strong summer, because we need more centers than Lundell if we want to compete in tje WJC-20´s. Pärssinen is not the answer for a top6 role, never, and probably not Intonen.

Good night!

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

Well the whole f*cking defense was a joke. Hatakka was not that good either. I would have chosen Aaltonen, Lundell and Petman or Puistola. Petman because he was the only one with Leevi who seemed to be working before the US scored the third and fourth goal.

Miettinen, Simontaival and other smallish players need to become much better skaters if they wan´t to compete in the big leagues in the future. Simontaival has some potential but if he can´t become faster or stronger he will "only" become a good player in the KHL.
Puistola needs to become much more dynamic, both skating and strength.
Saarela, oh my days that kid is overrated as hell in my opinion. Did not play one decent game in the whole tournament. At least for now, not even as good as his good-mediocre, better big brother Aleksi. He should get some motivation and a wake up call when he hits the summer training because this will not be enough in the future.
I understand why you are raging against the criticism towards Lundell. Ijuka and others are going a bit far. I had bigger hopes for him in this quarter but when the coaching is utter s*it it´s not that easy to be constructive and achieve something.
Pärssinen will not become an NHL´er, if he won´t have a rocket development that is. Agreed.
This tournament made question Kokkonen really much. I´m actually not sure he will make it to the NHL. Honestly, i think he will drop in the draft after his performances.
Heinola is the only D that could have a future in the NHL in my opinion.
Noor Kokkonen, noor Hatakka was even close to (at this moment) talents before them like Juolevi, Heiskanen, Jokiharju, Laaksonen, Vaakanainen.

A player like Myllylä would have probably been a much better fit in a fourth line than others?
Is Kallionkieli not better than some forwards in this underachieving team?

As a HIFK fan i was confused why Myllylä wasn't even training camp roster.
Myllylä was HIFK's best players in A juniors Sm liiga scoring 20+20 = 40 points in 52 games.

Maybe the reason why Myllylä wasn't in the team is that he didn't belong Marttila's sauna friends etc crap.
Only good news are those when these guys ( but not necessarily Lundell ) will play 2021 U20 WJC's head coach will be Antti Pennanen and Marttila hopefully is buried bottom of suomenlahti during that tournament.

 

[ijuka]

Yeah, Taponen was Finland's worst player in my opinion. Just absolutely terrible, constant barrage of softies. Leevi Aaltonen should have been in top 3 easily. I also would have had Puistola there.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

Probably weakest Finnish U18 WJC team since 2014.
This team really looked like a their head coach.

Every freaking Finnish fan saw how undisciplined and disjointed this team was.
But some weird reason head coach didn't see nothing.

Goalies were total crap but that atrocious defense didn't help our goalies at all.
How many times Marttila took timeout when Finland was in serious troubles yeah not many times.
Also that stone gargoyle head coach didn't have any clue when to pull goalie and do some drastic changes to get team back on track.

Only Finnish hockey association is enough dumb to keep this clown coach still employed in national team coaching.
And the saddest fact is that Marttila has named the head coach of Team Finland U16 national team in 2004 born age group.

When 2004 born age group goes to their U18 WJC's what will be Finland's result there.
If i should guess probably relegation round. Look in the mirror and shame on f***ing losers.

 

[ijuka]

Hopefully not the relegation, the 2004 age group looks very strong. And that age group might also have some unforeseen additions.

 

[karhukissa]

Marttila hopefully is buried bottom of suomenlahti during that tournament.

This made me crack hahah. Yeah Marttila should be gone for good now, we need these fresh school coaches like Pennanen, Manner and next generation of coaches which share their ideology and thoughts. These relics like Marttila and few others could go to beer league hockey.

Luckily our junior hockey powerhouses and youth teams are doing a great job in a daily basis. This revolution of next gen coaches and tight collaboration with national team and youth clubs are making our every age group compatible with other biggies and nowadays producing great depth of players with atleast couple first rounders with great NHL potential, situation is better than ever.

Off tournament, but we'll bounce back like always.

 

[FinPanda]

These guys are the future of our hockey, so I don't bash them all now. Many of them will be a huge part of our success with men. Some players who were terrible now will be a future fan favourites and (hopefully) will score some big goals.

This was just one tournament in their long career. I hope this makes them mentally stronger as they know what is like to play when everything is hard and coaching is terrible. It isn't only players fault when coach doesn't know what he is doing.

We just to get rid of these old school coaches and bring younger and more modern style hockey coaches. We have great groups of young players coming up, please don't ruin it with terrible coach choices.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

These guys are the future of our hockey, so I don't bash them all now. Many of them will be a huge part of our success with men. Some players who were terrible now will be a future fan favourites and (hopefully) will score some big goals.

This was just one tournament in their long career. I hope this makes them mentally stronger as they know what is like to play when everything is hard and coaching is terrible. It isn't only players fault when coach doesn't know what he is doing.

We just to get rid of these old school coaches and bring younger and more modern style hockey coaches. We have great groups of young players coming up, please don't ruin it with terrible coach choices.

Tell that to Finnish hockey association.
Old school coaches like Marttila shouldn't even coach our junior national teams.

But so long when Kummola's old kiss my ass club and sauna friends are in charge coaching staff hiring nothing won't change. Yes it's good Pennanen is next U20 head coach after Raipe Helminen but that's all for now.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

This made me crack hahah. Yeah Marttila should be gone for good now, we need these fresh school coaches like Pennanen, Manner and next generation of coaches which share their ideology and thoughts. These relics like Marttila and few others could go to beer league hockey.

Luckily our junior hockey powerhouses and youth teams are doing a great job in a daily basis. This revolution of next gen coaches and tight collaboration with national team and youth clubs are making our every age group compatible with other biggies and nowadays producing great depth of players with atleast couple first rounders with great NHL potential, situation is better than ever.

Off tournament, but we'll bounce back like always.

Yes we do and next bounce back hopefully is 2020 U20 WJC's.
Some players ( Lundell, Puistola, Simontaival etc) of this U18 WJC's will be playing in that tournament.
Hopefully Raipe Helminen and his coaching staff won't screw up that tournament.

 

[FinPanda]

Tell that to Finnish hockey association.
Old school coaches like Marttila shouldn't even coach our junior national teams.

But so long when Kummola's old kiss my ass club and sauna friends are in charge coaching staff hiring nothing won't change. Yes it's good Pennanen is next U20 head coach after Raipe Helminen but that's all for now.

This thread has been so negative so I tried to bring something positive here. I really hope they know in the Finnish hockey association what to do.

 

[ijuka]

What's annoying is that the 2004 age group will likely be the best group of Finns in a while, and they will be stuck with this coach. I hope they can overcome the situation somehow... But sigh, I wish just about any other age group got him.

 

[FiLe]

I really hope they know in the Finnish hockey association what to do.

While we've had occasional hiccups, and at least some of them, in hindsight, could have been avoided, it's still hard to say they don't know what to do because the soon-to-be-ending decade has generally been a MASSIVE success story for us in junior hockey. We've raked in more golds from U18 and U20 tournaments than the rest of the European countries combined. Now, they need to do a proper post-mortem to make sure the mistakes made here aren't repeated, but this "you're only as good as your latest tournament" attitude displayed by certain posters is a little silly. No, wait, scratch "a little".

 

[jvr32]

They lost to one of the best USA Hockey under-18 teams ever. They should look back at the games against Belarus and Czechs. Poor coaching and poor leadership cost there. This defeat shouldn't come as a surprise. Next year they will play automatically better against them since USA Hockey has a weaker team.

Also couple of key players disappointed. Kokkonen is slow and doesn't do much defensively, he's easily the biggest disappointment. Tuomisto is too slow, Lundell and Parssinen were the top 2 centers but both have a low upside offensively, and Saarela failed at center. Should have kept Nikkanen instead, since you can never have enough good centers. Rasanen and Niemela have no business playing at this level, but that is again down to coaching decisions, I wouldn't blame them. Taponen did well in goal considering expectations and his numbers in the A-sm.

 

[kelsier]

Next season, Finland is still the only country that can invite him, so what chance did they exactly take? The chance of making him feel slighted because he didn't make this pretty stacked squad two years underage? If so, I say good riddance.

If they ignore him starting next fall, then they are gambling. A little.

Didn't I just tell you? What exactly guarantee we have he doesn't play in the Canadian junior leagues come next year? Now we both know that's rhetoric question so don't bother. Yeah, we were so frigging stacked, we won one game in the entire tournament and exited after the first round. That's quite a feat all things considered, the least of which entering the U18s as the reigning champions.

We're dealing with one of the most gifted prospects ever coming out of the country, so yeah they should've given him that spot just to lock Lambert up for the future if for nothing else. Things certainly couldn't have gone any worse.

 

[FiLe]

What exactly guarantee we have he doesn't play in the Canadian junior leagues come next year?

And I'm asking you, what does it matter where he plays? Because even if he does head overseas, Finland is the only country that can call him in the next two years. If he wants to play in the 2020 U20, the 2020 U18, or the 2021 U20, the only country he can represent is Finland. There's plenty of time to lock him down.

And if he refuses that call because he wasn't invited to this tournament, then he was not worth our time in the first place.

Yeah, we were so frigging stacked, we won one game in the entire tournament and exited after the first round. That's quite a feat all things considered, the least of which entering the U18s as the reigning champions.

Looks like we have a clairvoyant here.

 

[FiLe]

To add to the above, it's highly unlikely that Lambert will cross over this summer, because a player must have turned 16 before his entry to the major Junior hockey leagues in Canada. Lambert turns 16 on December 19th this year. So unless he wants to play midget hockey instead of sticking to the Pelicans Junior A and getting perhaps a few Liiga games on his belt, he's going to stay here for at least another season. Which essentially means he can't play international junior hockey for a country other than Finland. The earliest he could represent Canada would be the 2023 U20 WJC. And if Finland hasn't claimed him by then, then it's probable he's not the kind of player Canada is awfully interested in either.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

They lost to one of the best USA Hockey under-18 teams ever. They should look back at the games against Belarus and Czechs. Poor coaching and poor leadership cost there. This defeat shouldn't come as a surprise. Next year they will play automatically better against them since USA Hockey has a weaker team.

Also couple of key players disappointed. Kokkonen is slow and doesn't do much defensively, he's easily the biggest disappointment. Tuomisto is too slow, Lundell and Parssinen were the top 2 centers but both have a low upside offensively, and Saarela failed at center. Should have kept Nikkanen instead, since you can never have enough good centers. Rasanen and Niemela have no business playing at this level, but that is again down to coaching decisions, I wouldn't blame them. Taponen did well in goal considering expectations and his numbers in the A-sm.

Excuse me what did you really say Taponen did well?
I don't know what games you have watched but those Finland U18 WJC games what i did watch Taponen didn't well.

Taponen was one of the worst goalies in entire tournament.
And one lucky shutout vs lousy Switzerland won't change that.

Finland lost 4 games in these U18 WJC's and Taponen was a starting goalie in 3 of those games ( Canada, Belarus and USA).
He was more than bad he was really atrocious and if he gets drafted to NHL with these U18 WJC showings i'm more than surprised.

If team like Finland wants to win U18 WJC gold medal they have to trust their number 1 goalie.
But now no-one in Finland's team didn't trust Taponen except clueless head coach Mika Marttila.

IF 3,53 goals allowed per game and 87,7 save percentage from U18 WJC's is OK performance then i don't know what to say.

 

[jvr32]

Excuse me what did you really say Taponen did well?
I don't know what games you have watched but those Finland U18 WJC games what i did watch Taponen didn't well.

Taponen was one of the worst goalies in entire tournament.
And one lucky shutout vs lousy Switzerland won't change that.

Finland lost 4 games in these U18 WJC's and Taponen was a starting goalie in 3 of those games.
He was more than bad he was really atrocious and if he gets drafted to NHL with these U18 WJC showings i'm more than surprised.

If team like Finland wants to win U18 WJC gold medal they have to trust their number 1 goalie.
But now no-one in Finland's team didn't trust him.

IF 3,53 goals allowed per game and 87,7 save percentage from U18 WJC's is OK performance i'm more than surprised.

Lmao. Your opinion is just plain stupid and idiotic here. His level wasn't far from Annunen's last year, and they won. The team in front of him was terrible. Stopped Caufield on the penalty shot. Made some good saves when his team was on the PK. He wasn't one of the worst goalies in the tournament, and how would you even come to that conclusion without watching all the teams? Have you even watched other teams othen than Finland? Stop that idiotic stat-watching, it gives me cancer. Anybody who blames Taponen is just simply out of touch with reality. Lazy excuse to blame team's poor performance on him. This is just so dumb.

 

[ijuka]

Lmao. Your opinion is just plain stupid and idiotic here. His level wasn't far from Annunen's last year, and they won. The team in front of him was terrible. Stopped Caufield on the penalty shot. Made some good saves when his team was on the PK. He wasn't one of the worst goalies in the tournament, and how would you even come to that conclusion without watching all the teams? Have you even watched other teams othen than Finland? Stop that idiotic stat-watching, it gives me cancer. Anybody who blames Taponen is just simply out of touch with reality. Lazy excuse to blame team's poor performance on him. This is just so dumb.

Taponen was terrible and constantly allowed softies. I don't know what stat-watching you performed, but I watched all the games. Taponen was far worse than either Luukkonen or Annunen. Blaming team's poor performance on him? No, I wouldn't blame the team's poor performance on him, that's their fault. Doesn't change the fact that Taponen was atrocious.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

Taponen was terrible and constantly allowed softies. I don't know what stat-watching you performed, but I watched all the games. Taponen was far worse than either Luukkonen or Annunen. Blaming team's poor performance on him? No, I wouldn't blame the team's poor performance on him, that's their fault. Doesn't change the fact that Taponen was atrocious.

Good to see someone else who's watched all Finland's U18 WJC games.

 

[Mestaruus]

Who is the head coach of next season for our U18 team? They need to put coaches like Juujärvi in the junior head coaching cycle instead of some of these older fart coaches of the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation.

Young hungry coach for a young team is the key in juniors. The likes of Ahokas and Niemelä.

 

[kelsier]

And I'm asking you, what does it matter where he plays? Because even if he does head overseas, Finland is the only country that can call him in the next two years. If he wants to play in the 2020 U20, the 2020 U18, or the 2021 U20, the only country he can represent is Finland. There's plenty of time to lock him down.

And if he refuses that call because he wasn't invited to this tournament, then he was not worth our time in the first place.

Looks like we have a clairvoyant here.

Yes we are more than well aware by now he isn't able to represent another country for two years (I was well aware of this before you even pointed it out). Yet I'm not sure which part of the message doesn't come through, the part where he can obviously stall his time, ignore the World Juniors altogether for the next coming years and just focus on the <insert a league> games and then play the WJC for the Canada jersey come his draft year should he so choose, or that we just shot ourselves in the foot by taking entirely unnecessary risk by not letting him have at least some small role in the team this year already. Lambert publicly stated he would've played for us had we asked.

So are you arguing it was a good call not assuring Lambert's loyalties as soon as possible or do you have some other agenda you're trying to push and assume it's being read between the lines? Considering the outcome of the U18s I really don't even see what's left there to discuss, unless you can somehow make an argument for Finland missing a spot in the quarterfinals altogether with slightly different setup. That is. if one even considers that much of a loss knowing how the team got coached, both in the bench and on the ice).

That last statement makes absolutely no sense whatsover. Lambert is half Finnish, half Canadian and should he choose the latter no one could blame him. We are potentially looking at top 3 pick in the world and definitely one of the best coming out of the country who's still in the pipelines and basically you're saying "oh well not much of a loss in case of the worst scenario". M'kay.