Finland sought victory over Sweden.
Finland the performances of the men's national ice hockey team in the EHT games in November in Tampere and in December in Zurich left much to be desired: two victories over Switzerland and two defeats against both the Czech Republic and Sweden.
The third EHT match of the season was in a different country: The Lions marched to the tournament victory with 4–2 victories over Switzerland and the Czech Republic and a particularly sweet 2–1 victory over the tournament host, Sweden, in front of the blue and yellow home crowd in Karlstad.
“Three wins in four days, and only five goals conceded. There were new players again, and they performed well in these roughs. You have to be satisfied”, the head coach Jukka Jalonen told STT by phone.
“It was a tough fight against Sweden. They have a very good team, even the best they have played against. A great victory with a hard fight and good goalkeeping,” added Jalonen.
Made a save against Sweden, plays in Växjö of the Swedish league Emil Larmi was really in a great mood. Larmi stopped a total of 35 shots and some of them very acrobatically. Especially in the final set, Tre Kronor grinded at a merciless pace in front of Larmi, but the Finnish coach managed to make 18 saves. Swedish civil servant Marcus Högberg survived the whole match with 11 saves.
“There was a little tumble drying, but we managed,” Larmi mused in an interview with the TV5 channel about his work-filled evening.
Finland goals in the match did Eemeli Finland and Pekka Jormakka. Jukurit forward Jormakka, 33, was called up to Sweden's EHT team at the beginning of the week due to a few absences, and the matches were his first in Leijon since the spring 2018 World Cup.
“It was a tough game. The Lions showed how solidly they can defend. A couple of goals were enough to win. A hard-fought victory for us”, Jormakka rejoiced on TV5's broadcast.
“Now let's go to work in Mikkeli, and we'll go all the way there. And then we'll see if we'll see each other in Prague”, the experienced player still glimpsed prospects for the spring, both for Jukurei and also for the World Cup tournament that starts in less than three months in the Czech Republic.
Swedish marched into the match on a seven-game EHT winning streak, and from Finland it had a win in the last five meetings between the countries. Now the head coach Sam Hallam was left to curse “margins”.
“We exhausted Finland (with pressure), but the margins were against us,” Hallam formulated for the Swedish public broadcasting company SVT.
Swedish captain Patrik Nemeth guessed that apart from Larmi, Sweden also fell into a perhaps pointless petty squabbling.
“We turned the game around a lot in Finland's end, but some of the goalscoring opportunities fell into the sand when we wanted to shake off an even better position,” Nemeth saw in his comments to SVT.
Jalonen There is still a long way to go before the World Cup match in May, which will decide the head coach. The next stage at Jalose is a familiar one, i.e. player tracking towards the World Cup drug, and it is also familiarly done behind the scenes: the head coach and Leijonien's GM Jere Lehtinen are heading on March 12 to observe the Finnish players of the NHL league.
“We have eight games there. And on April 7, the WC camps will start,” Jalonen said.
The story was completely updated on 11.2. at 21:55.
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