Finland leads Czechia after first period in bronze medal game at World Juniors
Published
Finland has a 2-1 lead over Czechia after the first period in the bronze medal game at the 2024 World Juniors in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Rasmus Kumpulainen opened the scoring when he snapped the puck past Czech goaltender Michael Hrabal just over six minutes into the third period.
Shortly after, Jani Nyman doubled Finland’s lead after he took a feed from Aleksanteri Kaskimaki to beat Hrabal.
After going down 2-0, the Czechs pulled Hrabal, who had played every game in the tournament, and replaced him with Jakub Vondras.
Finland got the first power play of the game when Ales Cech was sent off for two minutes for holding but the Finns were unable to capitalize on the man advantage.
The Czechs went on the power play late in the period as Finland's Emil Pieniniemi went off for tripping and they took advantage of the opportunity as captain Jiri Kulich scored on a one-timer eight seconds in to make things 2-1.