re finland sweden vs nhl teams was helsinki stockholm nhl expansion in apr ousrvr oulu fi mep phoenix oulu fi marko poutiainen writes finland d jyrki lumme d teppo numminen d peter ahola well well they don t like our defenders mainly lumme and numminen about is correct for numminen and lumme r teemu selanne compared to kurri selanne s points are too high lets make it or no kurri s points are too low for kurri and for sel nne well in the canada cup and world championships largely due to the efforts of markus ketterer the goalie or the players listed above and luck there s presumably a lot of decent players in finland that wouldn t be superstars at the highest level but still valuable role players however my guess would be that the finnish canada cup team would be a team in the nhl wow now it looks like you don t like our players what about guys like nieminen jutila riihijarvi varvio laukkanen makela keskinen and even if he is aging ruotsalainen the main difference between finnish and north american players is that our players tend to be better in the larger rink the canadian defenders are usually slower that defenders in europe and i think that there was more in our success than ketterer and luck though they helped i think that the main reason was that the team worked well together that s true game is so different here in europe compared to nhl north ame ricans are better in small rinks and europeans in large rinks an average european player from sweden finland russian or tsech slovakia is a better skater and puckhandler than his nhl colleague especially defenders in nhl are mainly slow and clumsy sel nne has also said that in the finnish sm league game is more based on skill than in nhl in finland he couldn t get so many breakaways because defenders here are an average much better skaters than in nhl also alpo suhonen said that in nhl sel nne s speed accentuates because of clumsy defensemen i have to admit that the best players come from canada but those regulars aren t as skilful as regulars in the best european leagues also top europeans are in the same level as the best north americans except lemieux is in the class of his own tommi
