It's the biggest upset of these U18 Worlds so far. Belarus stunned defending champion Finland 4-3 at Umea's A3 Arena on Friday night. It's the first time the Belarusians have defeated the Finns in 11 all-time U18 meetings.
"It feels so good," said Yegor Buyalski, who scored the deciding goal in the third period and collected two assists. "The whole team is so happy. It's hard work from all of us. It was a good game. All the guys play with national pride."
Goalie Rostislav Zinovenko excelled in his victorious tournament debut as Finland held a 61-19 edge in shots. Few thought the team in the red, green, and white uniforms would vie with Canada for top spot in Group A, but here we are.
Trailing 4-0, Finland mounted a third-period comeback. However, the hole was just too deep.
"I've got to say that Belarus's goalie played a really good game," Finnish captain Iivari Rasanen said. "It's quite hard at this level to come back from a four-goal deficit. I'm a little speechless."
Belarus, which has zero U18 medals all-time to Finland's 11, has now won two straight games here in Sweden. The Belarusians hampered the technically superior Finns with dogged checking and active sticks, and their special teams overachieved.
The winless Finns must wake up before they emulate their 2017 U20 counterparts. Finland triumphed at the 2016 World Juniors in Helsinki, but then played in the relegation round and finished ninth in Montreal in 2017."It's just the beginning of the tournament and everything is open for us," said Tuukka Tieksola, who got Finland's first goal. "We just have to go all-in right now and start to play like we can."
Just like in their 4-3 win over the Czechs, the Belarusians came out zooming. They showed their do-what-it-takes attitude when two desperate backcheckers crashed into Zinovenko and dislodged the net, stopping a Finnish shorthanded rush.
Even though the Finns outshot Belarus 15-5 in the first period, they tempted fate by taking the game’s first three penalties. The third time was the charm for coach Yevgeni Yesaulov’s crew. They moved the puck with old Soviet-style panache on the power play, and Buyalski angled a cross-crease pass for a pinching Dmitri Kozorez, who beat Finnish starter Roope Taponen on the open side at 17:45.
"We took too many penalties, especially in the first period," Rasanen said. "It's hard to get your offensive game going if you have guys in the penalty box all the time."
In the second period, Finland got its first power play of the game, but it was Belarus that capitalized shorthanded. Alexander Palchik picked off Kasper Simontaival’s cross-ice pass in the defensive zone, sped away on a 2-on-1 with Danil Martynov, and finished off Martynov’s return feed into a wide-open net at 6:56.
Now the Belarusians’ confidence was as palpable as the disco strut of Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” on the arena PA. Yevgeni Oxentyuk stretched the lead to 3-0 with a magnificent solo jaunt into the Finnish zone, catching the defence backing up and scoring his second goal of the tournament at 13:17. Like Buyalski, Oxentyuk would also finish with a three-point night.
"I just tried to shoot, and I didn't expect it to be a goal," Oxentyuk said. "I was a little bit surprised! But it was a good moment for us."
"In the first two periods, they won all those fights one-on-one," Tieksola said. "That's why it looked like that."
Would Belarus hold on in the third period? Or would we see yet another blown three-goal lead in Group A?
Buyalski gave his team some breathing room with the 4-0 marker at 3:48 as he capped off an opportunistic forechecking sequence. Then it was Finland's turn to get going.
The Finns pressured furiously with an extended two-man advantage, but Zinovenko was at his acrobatic best. Just after the penalties expired, Tieksola finally scored with a blast from the right faceoff circle at 8:10.
That ended a long drought. It was the first puck Finland had put in the net since Anton Lundell’s 3-0 goal at 1:01 of the second period in the 5-3 opening loss to Canada – a span of 87:09.
At 10:02, Patrick Puistola tipped Ville Heinola's point shot past Zinovenko to cut the deficit to 4-2. When Topi Niemela made it 4-3 with 4:20 left, the Belarusians called their timeout to regroup.
The Finns yanked Taponen for the extra skater with just over two minutes left. It became a 6-on-4 when Ilya Usov went off for hooking with 1:19 remaining. Zinovenko barred the door, and his buddies mobbed him at the final horn.
Of Finland's approach in the third period, Rasanen said: "We just went all out. That's the game we should be able to play every night for the full 60 minutes."
Finland and Belarus don’t have many notable connections in international hockey, but there are a few. Most are, unsurprisingly, Finnish highlights.
It was in a 5-1 win over Belarus at the 2010 Olympics that Teemu Selanne tied with Canada's Harry Watson, Russia's Valeri Kharlamov and Czechoslovakia's Vlastimil Bubnik for the all-time Winter Games points record (36). The Finnish Flash then broke the record versus Germany.
Also, when Belarus hosted the IIHF World Championship for the first time in 2014, the Finns won silver in Minsk and goalie Pekka Rinne was named tournament MVP.
Marking a change of pace, this Belarusian victory didn't come under the bright spotlight of the Olympics or Worlds. But you'd better believe it's an important building block for the future of the national hockey program.
Asked if Belarus is poised to contend for a medal, Oxentyuk said: "It's too early to speak about it. But we have good emotional conditions inside the team this year."
On Easter Sunday, it won't be a holiday for either of these teams. Finland will look to get into the wins column versus the Czechs, while Belarus takes on also-perfect Canada.
