Sochi, Russia (SportsNetwork.com) – Teemu Selanne and Mikael Granlund each had a goal and an assist to help Finland eliminate Russia from the men’s hockey tournament with a 3-1 win at Bolshoy Ice Dome.<\/p>\n
Juhamatti Aaltonen also scored, while Tuukka Rask stopped 37-of-38 shots he faced for the Fins, who advanced to the medal round at the Sochi Games for the third straight Olympics.<\/p>\n
The Finns, who have the most medals since NHL players began Olympic participation in 1998 with three, will now play Sweden in a rematch of the 2006 gold medal game in a semifinal matchup on Friday.<\/p>\n
Sweden moved on to the next round earlier Wednesday with a shutout win over Slovenia.<\/p>\n
Russia’s strength in these Olympics had been its goaltending, but that wasn’t the case on Wednesday, as Semyon Varlamov was pulled 6:42 into the second after allowing three goals on 15 shots.<\/p>\n
Sergei Bobrovsky relieved him and stopped all seven shots he faced.<\/p>\n
The loss was a bitter disappointment for the hometown Russians, who haven’t won Olympic hockey gold since the breakup of the Soviet Union, although the Unified Team won the 1992 tournament in Albertville.<\/p>\n
After Ilya Kovalchuk gave the Russians the lead, Finland answered 1:27 later on a pretty crossover move in front of the net off the stick of Aaltonen.<\/p>\n
Selanne than gave the Fins the lead for good with 2:22 left in the first. On the rush Selanne took a beautiful pass from Granlund and buried it past Varlamov.<\/p>\n
It was Selanne’s 22nd career goal in the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Selanne then played a part in Finland’s next goal as his shot on net kicked out to Granlund, who put it past Varlamov to end the goaltender’s day, as he was pulled 1:05 later in favor of Bobrovsky.<\/p>\n
While Finland has medaled in four of the last five Olympics, including a bronze four years ago and a silver in 2006, it has never won a gold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sochi, Russia (SportsNetwork.com) – Teemu Selanne and Mikael Granlund each had a goal and an assist to help Finland eliminate Russia from the men’s hockey tournament with a 3-1 win at Bolshoy Ice Dome. Juhamatti Aaltonen also scored, while Tuukka Rask stopped 37-of-38 shots he faced for the Fins, who advanced to the medal round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}