Hockey
The World Cup without Russia has lost a lot. But could ours win gold?
Zhamnov’s team would have been able to climb the podium, but taking away the victory from the Finns is problematic.
Following the Olympic gold, Finland celebrated the victory at the home world championship. We won beautifully – in a dramatic final against Canada, the third in a row and the fourth in the last six tournaments. It looks like their confrontation is becoming a new hockey classic.
But one question still haunts. If the Russian team took part in the tournament, would the Finns jump for happiness with gold medals in front of their fans? Or would their holiday be ruined?
To begin with, let’s recall the results of Russia’s recent meetings with both of the best teams in the tournament. Canada in any composition has not been able to beat since 2011. The Maples consistently win with pretty decent lineups: 6-1 in the 2015 final when Sidney Crosby and company were unstoppable, or the 2017 semi-final where Ryan O’Reilly, Mark Scheifli and Nathan McKinnon came in from 0: 2 after the second period. Russia also lost the coolest quarterfinal with overtime of 2018 against Connor McDavid.
As it turned out last year, in order to beat Russia, Canadians do not have to send stars to the World Cup. It only takes one growing Andrew Manjapane to decide everything. This year, the founders brought a similar line-up – no extra-class players, except for Matt Barzal and Pierre-Luc Dubois, and even then with a stretch. And again they have confusion and vacillation in the group stage – take out in the quarterfinals and be done with it. The Swedes until the third period quite coped with this task. So…
Would Russia have survived the final Canadian assault, leading 3-1? Even the Finns faltered in the final with their vaunted disciplined defense, which was further strengthened by Miro Heiskanen.
By the way, Finns. Their Russia won in the 2014 World Cup final and the 2017 bronze match. Sochi-2014 and the World Cup-2016 do not count – all the strongest played there, the situation is different. On the side of Suomi are the semi-finals of Moscow 2016 and the memorable 2019, where Jukka Yalonen, who returned to the national team, built a defense that neither Alexander Ovechkin, nor Evgeny Kuznetsov, nor Nikita Kucherov broke through. Here we will add a fresh Beijing finale. In general, the Finnish national team is also considered to be an inconvenient opponent for Russia for a reason.
Three years have passed since that dokovid semi-final – during this time the Finns have turned from a daring sensational team capable of crushing the class in order, into a full-fledged favorite of any international tournament. They won’t win back with the second number so easily – they have to add in the attack.
In this, Jalonen was greatly helped by the now former Ufa team Sakari Manninen – Teemu Hartikainen, to whom another, even more stellar Mikael, was assigned instead of Markus Granlund. Montreal forward Yoel Armia also flew in. Let’s remember Heiskanen again – although he is a defender, he has an attacking plan.
With the North Americans, the Finns had to play more open hockey, and they have greatly improved in it in recent years. Cool positional attacks, great majority. But there is no doubt that against Russia, in whatever composition it was, Suomi, if necessary, would again include branded swamps in the middle zone.
And so we got to the composition of the Russian team. Everything is more or less clear with the KHL players: we saw enough of them in Beijing – we couldn’t cope with the Finns. Who would fly in from the NHL? Again, the Washington players who lost in the first round, only Alexander Ovechkin had an injury at the end of the regular season, and it’s not at all a fact that the striker who set his sights on Wayne Gretzky’s record would have risked his health for a dubious prospect.
The same goes for Evgeni Malkin – he treated his knee for a long time, plus some uncertainty about the future in Pittsburgh: they want to halve his salary. Not until the world championships.
Of real help, one could count on Evgeny Dadonov, who raged in the second half of the regular season – the revival of the trio with Vadim Shipachev and Nikita Gusev would guarantee the team a shock first link no worse than the Finnish one. Perhaps, after the departure from St. Louis, Kirill Kaprizov would have arrived in time – he has never taken the gold of the World Cup, there is more than enough motivation and energy, the doting Minnesota in him would hardly be against it. Oh, how he would drive his opponents around the perimeter of someone else’s zone!
At the gate – Ilya Sorokin and Ivan Fedotov. Perhaps also Semyon Varlamov. Order? Quite. A couple of defenders Gavrikov – Provorov would look very tasty, Orlov, Romanov, Zaitsev, Zub would help. In general, the tournament has lost a very good team in terms of names.
But now let’s remember again how Russian stars suffered in much tougher squads with both Canadians and Finns. And how faded the attack of Alexei Zhamnov’s team at the Olympics looked, even if there was no one from the NHL there. To deprive the Czechs of the first World Cup award since 2012 is quite. Something bigger? Oh, it’s hard…
Source: Sportbox
I have been working as a sports journalist for about 6 years now. I currently work as an author at Sportish, which is a sports news website. I mainly cover sports news and I love writing about all aspects of the sport. I also have experience working as a broadcast journalist, so I have some great insights into how sport is reported and presented.