Semi-Quick Semifinal Olympic Thoughts: Thomas Harley and Jake Oettinger Advance to the Gold Medal Game

There can be no joy without heartbreak, in hockey

Two ostensibly different teams.

Two Dallas Stars players remain in contention for Olympic gold, after Canada and the USA both won their semifinal matches on Friday.

In the USA’s case, the win was a comfortable one. They faced a Slovakia team that had managed to win a group containing both Sweden and Finland, and they showed why Cinderella stories are magical for a reason. USA’s scorers chased Samuel Hlavaj from the net after up 4-0 halfway through the contest, and the third period was more of a victory lap than anything else.

Canada, meanwhile, had their second scare in as many elimination games after Finland took a 2-0 lead early in the game. And the Lions did their best to sit back and play clinical defensive hockey against a loaded Canadian roster, but it turns out that big, bad wolves really can huff and puff blow the doors down, if you don’t build the house solidly enough.

Thus, in the final 10 minutes of the game, Shea Theodore tied it up before Nathan MacKinnon put Canada ahead by dramatically drawing a power play and scoring upon it en route to a 3-2 victory.

In no particular order, here are a few quick thoughts about each of these games today.

Canada 3, Finland 2

• The pace of Canada-Finland was electric in the first period. It was thrilling stuff, and Finland’s 1-0 lead after 20 minutes looked like a sign that the Finns were embracing their identity as a true threat to win gold in a best-on-best tournament.

• Unfortunately, Finland changed their approach (subconsciously or otherwise) after Erik Haula’s shorthanded goal to make it 2-0. After putting up 8 shots on goal in the first period, Finland was out-shot 31-9 in the final two periods combined. Juuse Saros was great, but you can’t tempt fate, even against a Canadian team that is clearly not as dominant (and perhaps not as healthy) as they ought to be.

• It’s hard to know exactly how much of that was intentional, but one thing every coach tends to find out at some point is that it’s almost impossible to reverse course once players start playing not to lose. It’s why John Tortorella notoriously employed the phrase “Safe Is Death” in multiple stops in his coaching career, including a Stanley Cup win in Tampa Bay back in 2004. Finland was and is good enough, even without Sasha Barkov, to keep pushing for a third goal rather than trying to protect a 2-0 lead. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see that.

• I would have loved to see these teams in 3-on-3 overtime. It probably wouldn’t have lasted long, but it sure feels like Saros would’ve made at least one legendary save had it gotten there, right?

• Instead, we got Nathan MacKinnon gesticulating after he was high-sticked—not the first time we’ve seen such a thing, you may recall—and Canada got the power play (as they should have, in fairness). Not the most exciting result, but it was the deserved one, given Finland’s decision to park the bus against the most offensively loaded team in recent memory.

• This shot of Mikko Rantanen loading up for his shot to make it 1-0 is just great:

  

  You can see the edge of the puck peeking above the blade as it stands on edge. That made it fly a bit higher than it might otherwise have done, perhaps, but as we all learned from watching Tyler Seguin back in 2013, great players can score with almost any kind of puck.

• Also, Finland’s white jerseys are incredible, and I hope they get to wear them against Slovakia in the bronze medal game on Saturday.

• Speaking of the bronze medal game, that one might mean a tad more to Miro Heiskanen than to those of his teammates who already won gold at Four Nations (though we aren’t mind-readers here), but the Stars organization is probably hoping he doesn’t play another 27+ minutes.

• Speaking of ice time: Mikko Rantanen only played 16:09 on Friday. Some of that is related to Finland’s taking four penalties to Canada’s two, but it’s also the case that Finland as a whole simply didn’t attack nearly as much as they ought to have done, both in deployment and in practice.

  

• Roope Hintz isn’t at his best in a game that devolved the way this one did. It’s a shame, as the pace really suited him in the first period before he was turned into a checking center for most of the game. Alas and alack.

• As for Canada, Sam Bennett took a dumb penalty that Rantanen made Canada pay for. And with Sidney Crosby questionable for Sunday, he’ll likely have to be smarter. One mistake like that could cost them the whole thing against the USA.

• Thomas Harley continued his exceptional play on Friday, and in talking with Stars assistant coach Alain Nasreddine after practice, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

  • “Before going to the Olympics, he was playing pretty good hockey, too,” Nasreddine said. “I think this tournament’s also going to have the same effect it did for him last year at the Four Nations. He’s gonna come back with more confidence, obviously. That’s what this tournament does.”

  • More Nasreddine: “I’ll tell you what, he’s not a passenger. He’s on the ice, he’s in every situation. For me, it can’t get any better [than] for one of our guys to have that experience. Especially for a young guy, that’s gonna go a long way.”

• Nasreddine also added something interesting today: When it comes to conversations with Harley, Nasreddine has learned that the defenseman doesn’t want “the fluff” of receiving criticism in a soft light, or paired with positive things. Nasreddine said Harley just prefers to know what he did wrong, and where he can get better. (In other words, Harley’s meetings with his coaches sound about as blunt and matter-of-fact as his interviews with the media.)

USA 6, Slovakia 2

• Slovakia may have begun their tournament by humbling Finland with a 4-1 win, but they simply don’t have the horses to keep up with the top rosters in this tournament, and it showed.

• Even though shots on goal were fairly even (11-8) after the first period, I guarantee you that the chances weren’t. It was clear that the US’s structure was the most solid of any team Slovakia had faced, and even when they were able to mount some good pushes and draw early power plays, they couldn’t get interior.

• Tage Thompson didn’t play in the third period for “precautionary reasons,” according to the broadcast. He’s shown why he deserved to be selected for this team, so the US will hope that whatever knock he picked up wasn’t enough to keep him out for the final (and biggest) game of the Olympics. His power play one-timer off Hlavaj’s shoulder and in was beautiful.

• Erik Černák and the Tkachuks were mixing it up all game, and it finally ended with two minutes to go in an exchange of gloved punches and nonsense that resulted in misconducts aplenty. If you’re into that kind of thing, then you were loving it, even if the game was 6-2 and decided at that point.

• Jack Hughes and Dylan Larkin add even more offensive threats to this USA team, and while the semifinal game was much more of a mismatch than Finland-Canada, it has to be a big boost for the USA to be getting that sort of production throughout the lineup right now. They look pretty scary right now.

• Brock Nelson was good in the qualifying rounds, and even if he hasn’t been as big lately, I wonder if he just might score a huge goal against Canada on Sunday morning.

• Jordan Binnington and Connor Hellebuyck: Which goalie are you more confident in, right now? It might all come down to one save, if history is any indication. That’s not a fair way to define an entire goaltender’s tournament, but then most of goaltending isn’t fairly judged to begin with, so I suppose they’re used to it.

• Jason Robertson spent last week¹ in the Cayman Islands. If the USA comes up one goal short again on Sunday, you can bet a lot of people will be talking about this fact.

• (Note to self: Go buy more good coffee beans on Saturday.)
  

1. Robertson’s girlfriend joined him for the trip, while his cat (Murphy) stayed home.