Ever since losing the opening game to Canada at the World Juniors, Finland has been on a roll.
With Saturday’s upset of Sweden, the Finns have tumbled right into Sunday’s gold-medal game.
Undrafted centre Benjamin Rautiainen scored a power-play goal on a sharp-angle shot with just 38 seconds left in overtime for a 4-3 victory over Sweden at Canadian Tire Centre.
Finland will play the winner of Saturday night’s United States-Czechia showdown for the gold, while Sweden faces the loser in the bronze-medal game.
“Many times you need time to grow up together,” Finnish coach Lauri Mikkola said. “That first game was the big lesson for this team. After that, we have been doing lots of things right, and this is the result now.”
While Sweden was unbeaten in the preliminary round to finish atop the Group B standings, Finland was second in Group A with a 2-1-1 record.
Even in losing the tournament opener 4-0 to Canada, the Finns did come alive in the third period, when they fired 20 shots at Canadian goalie Carter George.
“In the first two periods, we were looking at them make plays,” said Dallas Stars first-round pick Emil Henning, who had a goal and an assist against the Swedes for his first two points of the tournament. “In the third period, we had our chances against Canada, too, so the coach told us just play this style of game. The biggest thing he told is that’s he’s really confident in this team and he knows we can do a lot better.”
After a scoreless first period on Saturday night, the Finns took a 3-2 lead into the third period.
The score stayed that way until Wilhelm Hallquisth’s shot from the blue-line with 8:28 remaining found its way through a crowd and past Finnish goalie Petteri Rimpinen to tie things up for Sweden.
“The first period was not that good, and then I think we played better and better,” said Otto Stenberg, a first-round pick of the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues who scored Sweden’s first two goals. “We had a lot of chances, and I think we should have scored more than one goal in that last period.”
Also scoring for Finland were Nashville Predators prospect Jesse Kiiskinen and undrafted centre Arttu Alasiurua.
The dramatics were left to Rautiainen, who ended the game with a shootout tie-breaker looming.
“I can’t describe my feelings at the moment, but it’s unreal,” the 5-11, 175-pound 19-year-old said.
“I saw that the goalie was standing, so I tried to shoot it as hard as I can. We know that, if we shoot a lot, hopefully one goes in. And, yeah, we did it.”
Rimpinen faced 46 shots in the Finland goal, while Melker Thelin dealt with 35 shots in the Swedish goal.
Sweden won silver at last year’s tournament in Gothenburg, while Finland finished fourth.