Finland won the world championship for the third time in history after beating Canada by 3-1 at Bratislava. This is the first time the team took home the championship cup in the last eight years. The experience seemed like a déjà vu experience for Finland, since it was in the same grounds that they last won a championship in 2011 against their Swedish rivals.

Match details

Marko Anttila, captain of the team and PyeongChang 2018, led the team to victory by scoring two of the three winning goals. Canada had taken the lead during the first period of the game as their defender, Shea Theodore, made a great pass away from the opposing defender. The missed penalty by Finland would, however, get avenged later in the game.

The Finn’s captain seemed to have had other plans and this was seen after Theodore scored a goal when he was near the penalty box. During the third period, Veli-Matti Savinainen made a smart play by taking advantage of the Canadian defender losing his stick and passed the feed to Anttila who scored another goal.

With only four minutes to the last minute of the game, Harri Pesonen drew past Murray and scored. This left the Canadians looking for every opportunity to score but they never saw it leading Finland’s win.

This win drove a lot of attention to the Finnish team since they had only named two NHL players in this season. When the bulk of the teams played at PyeongChang 2018, the Finnish team finished sixth. However, in the group stage, they came in second behind their final opponents, having beaten Maple Leaf as well on pool day.

The Finnish team later defeated Sweden and Russia during the playoffs. Canada had gone unbeaten on pool day and even won an undoubted 5-1 score against the Czech Republic. However, Finland were able to defend their reputation during the finals and came out victorious.