Finland wins thrilling semifinal against Switzerland – 08.12.2017

The first semifinals of the day was a match between Finland and Switzerland. It was indeed very tough for Finland as they had to fight really hard for their win against Slovakia. The quarterfinals were surprisingly hard as Slovakia managed to put up a fight and the win was not as easy as expected for Finland.

Finland was a favorite of the match against Switzerland, but it was still not that clear that they are going to win. It started as a very balanced game with interesting chances on both sides and no clearly dominant team.

After the first period, the score was still 0-0 and the game became even more exciting as both teams were fighting to score the first goal of the match. Even though Finland had more shots on goal, they did not manage to put Switzerland under pressure, so the Swiss team could still create good scoring chances as well. It became quite tough for Finland as Switzerland began to play more physically and started being rough one-on-one.

However, it was Finland who got lucky and scored the first goal of the match. My Kippila put Finland in lead seven minutes before the end of the second period, scoring a very important goal for Finland.
At the beginning of the second period, Nina Rantala increased Finland’s lead to 2-0. After this, Finland started to focus on defense more, making it almost impossible for Switzerland to break through and score.

Finally, Corin Ruttimann scored in a powerplay after Sanni Nieminen had been given a 2-minute penalty and cut down the score to 2-1. Unfortunately, this was the only goal Switzerland scored and after My Kippila scored an overwhelming penalty shot, the final score was 3-1.

Best players:
Finland: #80 My Kippila
Switzerland: #94 Lara Heini