Five years without gold: the Russian team lost to Finland in the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup hockey

Even before the start of the current World Hockey Championship, the Russian national team was called the main and almost unconditional favorite of the tournament. The coaching staff of Ilya Vorobyov was lucky to get the vast majority of overseas stars at his disposal - from the fight for the Stanley Cup already in the first round Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals, which made it possible for the national team to arrive, became the best domestic to the performers of our days, from goalkeeper Andrey Vasilevsky to striker Alexander Ovechkin, who is considered the best sniper of our time.

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⏰ 16:15 Moscow time
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By the names “Red Machine” with a large margin surpassed any potential rival up to Canada, during the last preparations for the world championship, she lost a potential leader in the face of central striker Toronto Maple Leafs John Tavares. For the first time since 2014, only the underestimation of their rivals could prevent the Russians from becoming the best team in the world (although nothing like this usually happens in the playoff championship of the planet) and problems with teamwork.

At the group stage of the 2019 World Cup, there were no prerequisites for the fact that Russian hockey players could not reach at least the final, they could not be seen - Vorobyov's wards won all seven matches in the main time, scoring 36 goals and conceding only seven. But after a difficult victory over the Americans in the quarterfinals for the national squad, it became truly alarming for the first time: not paying the slightest attention to the superstar status of the performers she had to resist, the US team showed that the Red Car could be stopped. If you play every next episode, you are eager to join in the power struggle at the sides and, most importantly, do not give the slightest sign of fear of an opponent who has superiority in class and experience.

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The Finns, whose application for the world championship included only two representatives of the NHL (this is Henry Yohikarya’s defender from Chicago Blackhawks and forward Juho Lammicco, who plays for the Florida Panthers), understood this point at the final stage of the Euro Tour, confidently sorting out the barely arrived in the location of the national team of domestic stars, and thanks to the "star-striped" made sure that the recipe they invented still works. And, combining the highest level of aggression in the struggle for the puck with close to perfect discipline, the Russians left without a final. Although before the starting throw-in, the realism of such a scenario was believed with great difficulty.

Jukka Yalonen’s guys gained confidence in their own abilities, at the different stages of their coaching career, he worked a lot in the KHL (the Finnish specialist led not only Jokerit, but also the St. Petersburg SKA, with whom he didn’t manage to win the Gagarin Cup, however) removal of Nikita Kucherov, who left partners in the minority already in the sixth minute of the match. Having played in the “five by four” format, the nominal outsider of the semi-final pair took the initiative to their own hands, forced Vasilevsky to make as many as 15 salvages in the first period and kept the advantage in throwing the shots to the target until the end of the main time. Only when local hockey players, faced with the prospect of an unexpected defeat, went to storm the front of goal, did they manage to get ahead in the statistical protocol - and finish the meeting with a 32 throw rate against 29 from an opponent.

Ojamaki and @leijonat came to close the opening # RUSFIN # IIHFWorlds

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Each of the throws of the Russians, however, reflected the 24-year-old guard the gate of the Finnish national team Kevin Lankinen - performer from the system “Chicago”, not yet debuted in the NHL, and part of the season 2018/19 and played at all in the East Coast Hockey League, the third most significant in a complex pyramid of club hockey USA. It’s impossible to say that he caught courage, but for a man who, in the semifinals of his debut in the professional career of the adult world championship, came face to face with Ovechkin, Nikita Kucherov and Yevgeny Malkin, he looked very, very confident. He didn’t “fry”, tried not to allow the Russians to finish off the puck and in no way inferior to Vasilevsky, who had long been accustomed to resisting attackers of this level.

Andrei, by the way, also had enough work. In one of the episodes in the starting dvadtsatiminutke goalkeeper "Red Machine" with great difficulty pressed to the ice jumped on the goal line puck, which did not have time to ship into the net incredibly talented teen Kaapo Kakko, and in the second period the Russian team even saved the bar - Niko Oyamyaki there were not enough centimeters to open an account in a tense and becoming more and more dramatic with each unsuccessful attack semifinal.

What is a goal from Anttila to get @leijonat on the board, and the 1-0 lead # RUSFIN # IIHFWorlds

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After the rivals left for the second break with the score 0-0, it became extremely obvious that the match was decided by a single puck: the teams almost did not tire of each other, although it was felt that the Finns were gradually slowing down. “Thanks” for this they had, first of all, Kirill Kaprizov - the young striker tried to sharpen the game at any opportunity, threw a lot on goal (with three hits on the target he lost only to Ovechkin with Kucherov) and looked for partners with gears, which the defenders of Yalonen did not expect from him. It is not surprising that in the end it was he who was recognized as the best player of the meeting as part of the national squad, although the CSKA forward did not score any points for performance.

The moment of truth for the “Red Car” was a small fine received by the defender of the Finnish team Oliver Kaski at the beginning of the third period - this was the first and, as it turned out, the only opportunity Vorobyov’s players to play the majority in the 2019 World Cup semi-finals. Unfortunately, the national hockey players did not take advantage of it, and soon missed the very counter-attack, which left them without a fight for gold in the fourth world championship in a row. A 33-year-old forward Marco Anttila, who had never tried his strength overseas and was not fixed even in the Novokuznetsk Metallurg, who rarely rose from the bottom of the KHL standings, successfully played on the finishing.

The final statistics of the game with the Finns in the semifinals of the World Cup looks like this. # DreamsRussia # IIHFWorldspic.twitter.com / vgQOKXJVWW

His efforts, as is often the case, broke the class: the final assault performed by the Russian team, crowned by replacing Vasilevsky with a sixth field hockey player, was inconclusive, and Lankinen designed a “rusk” in a duel with the worst scam of the Slovak tournament. On Sunday, May 26, when the new world champion will be determined (last year's title holder, the Swedish team, has already finished playing at the World Championship, having lost in the quarterfinal just to the offenders of the Red Car), the Finns will fight for gold with either the Canadians or the Czechs, and the Vorobiev team will have to be content to participate in the fight for the bronze medals.