Muutama kommentti tähän keskusteluun:
1) Tyyli. Olen täysin samaa mieltä asiasta ja Norosella on selkeästi taipumus pelata liian aikaisin syvällä jäissä vetäen itsensä lumikolalla vielä "lukkoon" jolloin ei pääse kunnolla kiinni korkeampiin vetoihin.
Toki tällainen asia on korjattavissa muutaman kuukauden työllä.
Tuolta
www.gettyimages.com sivuilta kun hakee Norosen kuvia löytyy pari aivan malliesimerkkiä joissa USA tekee maalin juuri tällaisessa tilanteessa.
2) Toinen homma on tuo maalivahdin henkinen puoli ja selkeän ykkösen nimeäminen ajoissa. Uskomattoman tärkeä asia. Kun mv:n psyyke ja itseluottamus on kunnossa niin kiekko näyttää todella suurelta ja tulee hiljaa. Kun asiat eivät ole kunnossa on fiilis tietysti päinvastainen.
Kisojen sivuston pitäjätkin näyttävät asian huomanneen kun olivat tehneet tämän jutun alla aiheesta.
What do your spouse and a hockey goalie have in common?
Why does Mika Noronen look so dejected?
Yes, that's my question. What DO your spouse and a hockey goalie have in common?
Well, neither feels really happy if you don't tell them they are your number one. That's exactly the reason why the Finns failed again here in Prague. Just as in almost every case in the NHL playoffs, a team without an undisputed number one goalie has not won the Stanley Cup. Even if they might have the best duo in the NHL.
A coach's pre-playoff choice of who will be the number one man between the pipes is a crucial one. This should be the same at all tournaments--Olympic Games, World Cups, and IIHF World Championships.
It hasn't been a problem for Canada or Sweden, the 2004 finalists. Roberto Luongo has carried the load throughout the tournament, even though JS Giguere has seen some time between the pipes. And Henrik Lundqvist has done admirably as Sweden's number one.
Let's get back to the Finns. Their last "happy number one" was Ari Sulander back in 1998. He confidently backstopped the Fins to the 1998 bronze medal in Nagano versus Canada, and won the silver medal in the Worlds that same year by only losing the two final games by narrow margins against Sweden. It was definitely not Sulander's fault that the Finns were unable to win their second world title since 1995. Since then, the Finns have never had a happy and secure number one again.
Instead, they have tried the likes of Miikka Kiprusoff, Vesa Toskala, Pasi Nurminen and Jani Hurme. This year in Prague, they tried out three goalies: Fredrik Norrena versus Denmark, Jussi Markkanen versus Ukraine, and Mika Noronen for the rest of the tournament. Noronen faltered in the quarter-finals vs. Canada, losing "the Finnish way" 5-4 in OT after leading nearly the whole game.
And we will always remember last year's quarter-final versus Sweden. The Finns had a 5-1 lead and lost 6-5. After the fourth Swedish goal, they pulled Jani Hurme and put in Pasi Nurminen.
It's not unusual for goalies from Finland to be involved in the most dramatic moments of their hockey history. In 1974, Finland achieved a sensational 5-2 victory over Czechoslovakia and were very close to winning their first all-time Worlds medal. But it turned out that goaltender Stig Wetzel had taken ephedrine, and the result was transformed into a 5-0 forfeit defeat.
The Fins had to wait for their first Olympic medal until the 1988 Calgary Games.
And now, they have a surplus of riches--too many good goaltenders. They look like a donkey in between two haystacks, not knowing which one he should eat. (If that goes on, he's going to die.)
This season, Finland has had seven goalies in the NHL – Miika Kiprusoff (Calgary), Vesa Toskala (San Jose), Pasi Nurminen (Atlanta), Kari Lehtonen (Atlanta), Antero Niittymäki (Philadelphia), Jussi Markkanen (Edmonton) and Mika Noronen (Buffalo).
At this point, it's almost impossible to decide which one would be the best to enter as a number one in a given tournament.
There's another obvious reason why the Finns failed in the goaltending department: here in Prague, the Finns had no goalie coach on their staff.
If you don't have a happy and confident number one in a tournament, you should have at least a goalie coach who can tell the goalies why they should feel happy.
Make sure, your goalie is confident and happy.
Otherwise you will not win the IIHF World Championship.