I’m sure that in your house, like ours, May is all about the ice hockey world championships. It has been a superb year for both Britain and Finland.
Two years ago, Britain was in the third division. But, having won their division two years running, they found themselves in the top tier playing countries that actually play ice hockey. There are two groups of eight with the bottom from each being related and it was always going to be a struggle to stay up.
The initial scorelines were predictable: 3-1 to Germany, 8-0 to Canada, 9-0 to Denmark and 5-0 to Finland. The only people we seriously scored against were the US, who still beat us 5-3. It came down to the final game: Britain vs France. The loser was going down, and France had been in the top division for a while.
In the second period, France took a 3-0 lead. Surely it was all over? But then Dowd found the back of the net for Britain. And them Hammond. The third period started 3-2. Farmer brought us level in the third period and we went into overtime and then bang! Davies puts an overtime winner past France to keep us up.
Meanwhile, Finland easily made it through the group stage as usual. They came second, behind Canada, despite having beaten them, due to wobbles against Germany and the US. The route to the final was no easy path: there are four good ice hockey teams in the world and Finland had to beat them all.
It started with a 5-4 overtime win against Sweden in the quarterfinals. Next up: Russia, with the sole goal producing a 1-0 win for Finland. Finally, the final itself. Having beaten the 3rd and 2nd ranked teams in the world, they now had to take on the 1st.
Canada started well, taking a 1-0 lead in the first quarter. But Finland was not out: Anttila, who scored the winner against Russia in the semi-final, brought Finland level in the second period. Two minutes in period 3, he scored again! With five minutes to go, Pesonen scored to give Finland a 3-1 lead. Canada immediately pulled their goalie but it was no good. Finland took their third world championship!
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Tags: finland, ice hockey, iihf
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 at 11:00 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.