Finland secured a 4\u20131 win over Sweden in the men\u2019s Olympic ice hockey tournament on Friday. The result delivered Finland\u2019s first victory of the group stage after a 4\u20131 loss to Slovakia in the opening match.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The game began at 13.10 local time and drew attention across Finland, with the long-standing rivalry adding weight to the group fixture.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Goaltender Juuse Saros played a central role in the outcome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
He stopped 34 shots and conceded once. Sweden pressed in the third period and outshot Finland 15\u20135 in the final frame, yet failed to break through.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the closing minutes Sweden removed goaltender Filip Gustavsson and skated with six attackers. Finland held the line.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With 35 seconds left, Mikko Rantanen scored into the empty net to confirm the 4\u20131 result.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finland took three points from the match.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finland took several penalties during the match. Sweden gained repeated power play opportunities but scored once.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Head coach Antti Pennanen addressed the performance in an interview with Yle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMany things made this possible. Juuse was good in goal. Good penalty killing. At the end we handled the 5\u20136 situation well,\u201d Pennanen said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He expressed concern about the number of penalties.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not happy with how many penalties we took. Apart from one goal, the penalty killing delivered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Defenceman Niko Mikkola blocked a shot and left the ice to receive treatment on his leg.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the stands, former Formula One driver Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen watched the match with family members.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the group, Slovakia beat Italy 3\u20132. Slovakia now lead the group ahead of the final round of matches, where Finland will face Italy and Sweden will meet Slovakia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
HT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finland secured a 4\u20131 win over Sweden in the men\u2019s Olympic ice hockey tournament on Friday. The result…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[87],"tags":[9303,9301,158,9297,113,9299,9300,8814,9304,9298,9305,9302],"class_list":["post-12012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-helsinki","tag-anton-lundell","tag-antti-pennanen","tag-finland","tag-finland-sweden","tag-helsinki","tag-juuse-saros","tag-mikko-rantanen","tag-milano-cortina-2026","tag-olli-hiidensalo","tag-olympic-ice-hockey","tag-paul-maurice","tag-tre-kronor"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}