Finland Has Won Ice Hockey World Championship 2019!

Team captain Marko Anttila with Kalervo Kummola and Rene Fasel of IIHF

In a super high-tempo final, Finland won Canada and won 3-1. Canada had puck control about 55% of the time in the first and the second periods. Usually, Finland has prevailed through controlling the puck because Finland's (lack of) efficiency at scoring has required that. This time, the opposite was true. Finland's goalie had almost 40 saves. Canada won the first period 1-0 and Finland won the second period 1-0. Finland scored two goals in the third period. The two first Finnish goals were scored by Marko "mörkö " (= "bogeyman") Anttila. While Finland was coming under tremendous pressure in the last half of the third period, Finland's Antti Pesonen scored Finland's third goal in a sharp counter offensive. In this tournament, Finland's team was inexperienced and young while Sweden, Russia and Canada won in the quarter final, semi-final and the final had many high-paid NHL stars.

This is championship is third for Finland. The first ever was won in 1995 and the second in 2011. The first Olympic or World Championship medal was won in 1988 when Finland won silver in Calgary. If this "pattern" holds, the next one will be won in 2023. It will be a nice consolation after the cryptocurrency market enters yet another bear market that year (heh heh).

Finland in general has done much better at ball games in the last 10 years than in previous decades. Football (soccer), volleyball and basketball have seen a rise in level of play in addition to ice hockey. There have been no medals in the other games but that is to be expected as those games are played everywhere in the world. Traditionally strong winter sports like cross country skiing and ski jumping have seen much less international success than before while there has been more success and ball games. I chalk this change up to two factors: urbanization and climate change. Increasingly, winters have been less snowy and fewer children and youth gifted at sports take up skiing or ski jumping or even athletics, which used to be something Finland excelled at. Because of Finland's dominance at long and middle distance running in the first half of the 20th century, Finland still has the highest number of medals per capita in the summer olympics. But this no longer the case. The wet and snowless winters make people want to take up indoor sports. Urbanization means that in an increasing number of ball games, there are sufficiently good local series to offer challenge for talented players.

"Mörkö" doing what he does:

Congratulations team on winning gold!