Finland practised goal scoring against France

France was pushing and irritating and only trying to confuse Finlands game and they succeeded in that for one and a half period. Surprisingly Finns went with into it and took three penalties in the first period. Apparently coach Jalonen used some f-word (v-word in Finnish) during the break and in the second period Finland flied high. Much blamed Finlands power play was tonight outstanding; totally five goals out of seven were scored on power play.

In the second period Finland scored four goals. Some of them were deflections from the air and impossible for a goalie to stop but altogether French goalie Fabrice Lhenry didn't have his best day today. On the other hand a good day from the goalie wouldn't have helped much, Finland was today good, at least from 30 minutes onwards.

Finland's Jani Tuppurainen and Tuomas Kiiskinen played their first games and they can be satisfied with their output. Especially Kiiskinen was good in penalty killing. Both of them got also an assist. First line's winger Jussi Jokinen scored finally his first goals of the tournament and hopefully got "the monkey out his back". Koivu had totally one goal and three assists and showed once again why he his the captain of this team. He was also honored as a best player of team Finland.

France was surprisingly poor in this game. It wonders how they could beat Kazakhstan with 6-3. Or should we rather wonder how poor is Kazakhstan if they lost to France. But, there are different kind of targets for different teams. For France and Kazakhstan the target is obviously staying in the group A and for Finland it is World Championship.

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