Canada set to meet Finland in world ringette championship final

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This article was published 03/11/2007 (6839 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA – Sixty-four seconds away from claiming the world ringette championship, Canada gave Finland the small opening it needed to defend its title.

Markjukka Virta’s power-play goal with 1:04 left forced overtime and Anne Pohjola scored at 11:06 of the extra period to give the Finns a 5-4 victory Saturday afternoon before a disappointed, pro-Canada Civic Centre crowd of 5,501.

“It’s the world championship and you’ve got the two best teams on the ice battling and every second of the game counts,” said Canadian forward Barb Bautista. “Both teams were battling really hard and it came down to a late goal in the third period when we were obviously hoping to put it away.

“Again, every second counts.”

Bautista’s power-play goal with less than five minutes to play in the second period gave the Canadians a 4-3 lead and put them in position to avenge their loss to Finland in the 2004 final.

But the Finns took over after Virta knotted things up, dominating overtime while outshooting Canada—2. They collected a turnover in their own end that Pohjola ended up burying for her second goal of the game.

“The hometown crowd was amazing,” said Ashley Peters, who led Canada with 12 goals, one of them Saturday, in four games. “Even when we lost they were still cheering for us.

“It was definitely disappointing but it comes down to the little things and Finland capitalized on one of our little mistakes.”

Canada was badly outshot 75-34 overall and only the goaltending of Keely Brown gave the hosts a shot to capture their first gold medal since 2002.

Jennifer Wakefield and Colleen Hagan also scored for Canada while Elina Raesola and Salla Kyhala had the other goals for Finland.

“Their goalie played a really great game I thought, and without her I think it would have been pretty bad,” said Finland coach Virpi Karjalainen.

Finnish netminder Anna Vanhatalo made 30 saves.

Canada took a 3-1 into the second period before the Fins tied the game with two quick goals to open the middle frame. Canada had scored 60 goals in three games coming into the final while the Finns had 79 goals in their three round-robin contests.

“We knew the Canadians were going to come hard but we planned our game for 60 minutes to just keep on playing our game and we could win it,” said Karjalainen. “We didn’t plan on going into overtime though.”