Sweden won U19 women and men matches by 2 goals

U19 women: Sweden was better than Finland on Saturday at Energia Areena, Vantaa by score 3-5 (2-1, 1-2, 0-2). Sweden won also U19 men against Finland. Finnish black-out came in the second period and Sweden won the period by 6-3. In the third period Finland came stong, but wasn't able to get result. The final score was 8-10 (1-2, 3-6, 4-2).  

Finland had an excellent start: Sanna Roisko was able to score from rebound shot by Viivi Lehtimäki, and Mirja Hietamäki scored 2-0 from nice cross from her sister Laura Hietamäki. As the match grew older Sweden fought back and equalised match, and finally in the third period Cassandra Edberg decided the match for Sweden with two goals: first to 3-4 and in the final minute 3-5 as Finland was taking risks trying to equalise.

Finland has potential to perform better
Assistant coach Tommi Seikkula looks forward to the WFC2010 in May.
- The result was fair for today's performance. Practises and friendly matches have shown that our team can perform much better. We need to analyse where we did not manage today and how can we get the best possible result in the international matches as well.

U19 men showed scoring skills
First period was quite even. Finland was nervous at the start and made a lot of mistakes. Even though, Sweden had to have a power play by two in order to score. Jack Qvist and his twnty-headed fangroup had a moment of joy as he scored a low shot to the Joni Järviö's goal. Few moments from that Patrik Sinerus scored from the backpole. Finland scored their first goal from penalty shot by Matias Kaartinen. 

Panu Kotilainen held Finland's hopes up with two goals in the second period, but Sweden had four goals lead as teams were heading towards third period. The game seemed as good as over as Daniel Åkesson added Sweden's lead to 4-9 at power play. Finland had the final momentum at power play as well: Lasse Ylisiurunen scored, and after that Casper Pfitzner hit his own rebound to the back of the net. It almost seemed that Finland might just make it, but was doomed to play shorthanded. Tim Wiklund was the one to finalise the match to score 10-8.

- The end of the first period was ok. In the second period the communication with defenders and goalkeeper failed and we had lots of personal mistakes, head coach of Finland, Jarkko Rantala analysed in short.

Amount of spectators: U19 women 618, U19 men 1081.

U19 women match record and statistics 
U19 men match record and statistics