NHL
2026 Olympic
Hockey
Finland earned a big win against Sweden on Friday. How does that result impact the pressure both teams feel at this early stage of the tournament? RvS.Media / Robert Hradil / Getty Images
MILAN — The hockey rivalry between Nordic neighbours Sweden and Finland is often described by Swedes as being akin to that of a big brother and a little brother.
Sweden, of course, is the big brother in this scenario, the sibling who doesn’t think all that much about little brother, who is obsessed with beating big brother.
Finns, of course, don’t characterize it in quite the same terms.
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But when you shape a narrative the way Sweden often does in this rivalry, it adds more pressure to your national team to deliver. And in Finland, the pressure dynamic on the men’s national team is a unique animal.
So, after Sweden opened the Olympic tournament Wednesday with a somewhat tepid 5-2 win against host Italy — a game that was tied 2-2 with four minutes left in the second period — and Finland opened with a 4-1 upset loss to Slovakia, it only cranked up the pressure on the round-robin matchup between the two rivals Friday.
Finland earned a big 4-1 win against Sweden at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, so let’s look at how that result impacted the pressure both teams feel at this early stage of the men’s hockey tournament.
Olympic hockey scheduling can be heavily compressed, but as luck would have it, Finland had an off day after its opening game in Milan on Wednesday.
That 48-hour gap between games could have been a celebration in Finland of its beloved national team’s tournament-opening win against Slovakia, a country with roughly the same number of people, but a team that is a tier below Finland in the international hierarchy of the sport.
Except that is not how things played out, because Finland lost that game despite a 40-25 shot advantage. It was a case of Finland’s process being fine — it largely dominated the run of play — but the result being less than fine.
The team was in its bubble in Milan, but back home in Finland, a rabid hockey nation’s doubts that were simmering underneath the surface began to boil over.
Finland’s head coach, Antti Pennanen, is under enormous pressure as someone who has never coached outside Finland and has no real coaching pedigree. Over that off day Thursday, a Finnish media report stated some players were quietly campaigning to add Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice to Finland’s staff for the Olympics.
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So, to say Finland — and especially Pennanen — was under some degree of pressure entering its game against its arch-rival Friday would be a massive understatement.
So when Mikko Rantanen of the Dallas Stars shot a puck from his own blue line into the empty Swedish net to ice the win Friday, it was like a pressure valve was opened wide.
Afterwards, Rantanen was asked to describe what Finland is like whenever the national team plays for someone who doesn’t understand a thing about it.
Finnish Hockey Passion For Dummies, in other words.
“The comparable is probably the Maple Leafs, I would say,” Rantanen said. “I don’t know, maybe something like that, especially the media. If you lose in a big tournament, especially against the worst team on paper that they expect you to win, and you lose, I think it’s a disaster (to the media).
“We don’t really read the news, so it doesn’t really bother us. But that’s how it is.”
The other pressure valve release on Friday came courtesy of someone on the opposite end of the Finnish hockey star spectrum from Rantanen.
Ottawa Senators defenseman Nikolas Matinpalo — an injury replacement at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off — has not scored a single goal in the NHL this season, and has only one in 75 career games.
But Matinpalo opened the scoring for Finland on Friday, ringing a wrist shot from distance off both goal posts and in.
“It’s great to score a goal,” Matinpalo said. “It’s been a little bit tough early this year, but I’m happy that I played today and I scored.”
Matinpalo is relatively new to this role on the national team, so perhaps that is why he can view the positive side of his country’s hockey passion. Pressure, the cliche goes, is a privilege, and that’s how Matinpalo chooses to look at it.
“Finland is a big hockey country, so there’s always pressure when you play on the national team,” he said with a smile. “I think it’s a good thing too. It’s nice to see that people care about us.”
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What makes it easier for Finland’s players to shut out the pressure at home is they have all been on the other side of it; they know how it feels to be watching your heroes on television on a stage like this.
“I always watched (the Olympics) when I was a kid,” said Utah Mammoth defenseman Olli Määttä, who played for Finland the last time NHL players participated in the Olympics in Sochi in 2014. “I can’t remember 2002 in Salt Lake City, but I woke up in the middle of the night watching those games. It’s unbelievable to be playing in them now. Grateful and thankful that you have a chance to do this.”
Määttä is 31 now, but he was 7 when he watched the Salt Lake City Games, the only Olympics that included NHL players where Finland did not reach the medal podium.
It is Finland’s consistent ability to rise to the moment at the Olympics that creates the pressure these players are under, and they get it because they were all once the source of that pressure.
“We’ve been through it, everybody’s been through that and knows what it is,” Määttä said. “You lose a game, everything’s burning. You win a game, and all of a sudden they’re planning for a parade.”
The parade is still on hold, but to say this win against Sweden was inconsequential, that it was just a preliminary round game and the real games only begin in the elimination portion of the tournament, would be a gross misunderstanding of what this team means to Finland.
Two games into their Olympic men’s hockey tournament, a shaky opening win over Italy and a loss to rival Finland, and the powerhouse Swedes have yet to find their ‘A’ game.
On the one hand, that is somewhat concerning; the glass-half-full version is that the format of the tournament allows them one more game to find it before it gets real.
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“I think there’s another level there for sure,’’ Sweden captain Gabriel Landeskog said. “I thought tonight we were a little sleepy in the first period and they were not. And then I thought we got better as the game went on, and obviously we made it 2-1 in the second and we get a s—ty bounce and they score to make it 3-1 (shorthanded). So you’re down in a hole. But we kept pushing.
“They defend hard, they’re well coached, and they play hard. We knew it wouldn’t be easy and today they won.’’
There’s losing a game and then there’s losing to their No. 1 rivals. The emotion of the rivalry was on full display Friday, both NHL-laden rosters finishing their checks at will and getting extra shots in after the whistle.
This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill preliminary round game. All the more reason it will be more difficult for Sweden just to park it and turn the page for Saturday’s round-robin finale with Slovakia.
“It’s hard but we have to,’’ New York Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad said of quickly turning the page. “We have to digest it now, we’ll digest it right after, go through some stuff and then get ready for tomorrow. If we linger in this game, we think about this game too much, it’s not gonna help us tomorrow. So we have to do it.”
One cannot overemphasize the significance of the Sweden-Finland rivalry and the danger of this loss lingering.
“We all know that we weren’t good enough today, they were better than us, they won,’’ said defenseman Erik Karlsson of the Pittsburgh Penguins. “Nothing we can do about it now. We’ve got to move on now. We’ll go through this game and figure out what we need to do better. We know that we have better in us. Luckily for us, it was a group stage game, not an elimination game.’’
Still, Karlsson, one of Sweden’s leaders who wears an ‘A,’ didn’t hide his disappointment Friday.
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“They played well, give credit when credit is due,’’ he said. “They were better than us today. We didn’t really meet the standards that I think we have within ourselves and as our team. That’s on us. And that’s something that we need to figure out.’’
For Sweden, two key things to ponder:
• Why did Nashville Predators star winger Filip Forsberg start this tournament as the 13th forward? He played only one shift in the opening game. After Sweden fell behind to Finland on Friday, his usage eventually crept up to 13 shifts and 9:31 of ice time as the Swedes pressed for offense. One NHL team executive shared with The Athletic that he was surprised Forsberg’s role was so minimized for Sweden so far. Perhaps that will change now.
• Goalie Filip Gustavsson allowed two goals on his first four shots against Italy and allowed an opening goal on the first two shots against Finland. Overall, he’s allowed five goals on 45 shots in two games. He did steady himself in the final two periods Friday. Head coach Sam Hallam went with Gustavsson, the goalie having the better NHL season, over veteran Jacob Markström, who has the lengthier body of work. The Minnesota Wild goalie needs to start the next game more solidly. His whole team was sleepy to start Friday’s game.
“I don’t know. Sometimes it just bounces the wrong way,’’ Gustvasson said. “It’s very fast out there and it’s hard to control that. Try your best, be as focused as possible.’’
Don’t be surprised if Sweden turns to Markström on Saturday since it’s a back-to-back scenario. The real question after that, depending on how it goes versus Slovakia, is who has the net moving forward for the elimination games?
Saturday’s game has some urgency to it.
“Listen, that’s the beauty of the tournament, we talked about it beforehand, it’s about chemistry, special teams are important, and yeah, line chemistry, D pairings, goaltending, you have to try to find it all as soon as possible and that’s the way it is,’’ Landeskog said. “The margin for error is so small.”
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The Swedes won silver in Sochi 12 years ago, the last time it was best-on-best with NHL stars. There’s an inner-belief in that room that anything remains possible for them here.
“Hopefully it’s an opportunity for us to realize what we can do better and what we need to do to be more successful as a team,’’ Karlsson said. “Hopefully we can take this loss as something positive moving forward and when we look back at this tournament, this was something that triggered something.’’
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