Finland downs Slovakia to reach final at Beijing 2022 in men's ice hockey

BEIJING, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Finland defeated Slovakia 2-0 for its fifth straight win to reach the final of the men's ice hockey event at Beijing 2022 here on Friday.

Finland beat Slovakia 5-3 in the 2010 Olympic bronze medal game, which was their only previous Winter Games meeting.

Finland's forward Sakari Manninen, 30, scored his fourth goal in Beijing at 15:58, and Harri Pesonen threw the puck into the net without the goalkeeper in the last minute to seal the victory.

"Going to an Olympic final is like a dream. You dream of these kinds of moments, but at the same time (I try to) focus on the right things, not think about it too much and prepare for the next game," Manninen said.

"It (the loss) is a tough pill to swallow. We had them under a lot of pressure but could not score," said Marek Hrivik, the captain of Slovakia.

Finland won the three games including defeating Slovakia 6-2 in the preliminary round and stunned Switzerland 5-1 in the quarterfinals.

The Slovaks got only one win in the preliminary round but smashed Germany 4-0 in the qualification round.

Slovakia equalized with 44 seconds left in the regular time and beat the U.S. 3-2 in shootout in the quarterfinals, and this is the first time since Turin 2006 that neither Canada who was eliminated by Sweden nor the U.S. has advanced to the semifinals.