Oliver Kapanen wins bronze medal with Finland

On paper, Finland had the advantage, but the Slovaks should not have been underestimated, especially Slafkovsky, who had an excellent tournament.

Right from the start, Slovakian goalie Samuel Hlavaj (who has been very good in the Olympic tournament) made a great save after putting himself in a precarious position.

A few minutes later, Hlavaj was powerless to stop Sebastian Aho’s goal, which opened the scoring in the game.

A shot from the point (which appeared to be deflected by Kapanen) by Miro Heiskanen didn’t get past the Slovak wall, but Aho and Kapanen were well positioned in front of the net and the Hurricanes player scored on the rebound.

The Finnish defenseman’s shot really looks like it was deflected by Kapanen, and I’m not the only one who noticed. However, the assists were awarded to Heiskanen and Artturi Lehkonen.

In any case, Kapanen greatly assisted in the goal with his presence in front of the net. Overall, Kapanen had a very good first Olympic period. He was heavily involved, caused turnovers, and was even used on some faceoffs. It should be noted that he is Finland’s only right-handed center.

Finland quickly dominated in this period, but the Slovaks had a strong finish to the first period and continued into the start of the second period.

However, as the game approached the halfway point, Erik Haula doubled his team’s lead with a shot that seemed harmless. Hlavaj should have stopped that shot.

Haula once again doubled his team’s lead, as he had done against the Canadians in the semifinals.

However, as happened against the Canadiens,Finland’s opponent narrowed the gap. Slovakian captain and former CH player Tomas Tatar used a nice deke to beat Juuse Saros. Tatar took advantage of a turnover to put Slovakia on the board at the very end of the second period.

And hearing Pierre Houde announce Tatar’s goal brought back fond memories.

Slovakia certainly had the advantage in the final period. They were buzzing around and created some great scoring chances. Saros, however, was excellent in goal.

As for Slafkovsky, he had some good scoring chances and was one of the best Slovak players in the game (along with Tatar). In fact, the CH forward was the most used forward in the game, with only Simon Nemec seeing more ice time (23:57).

However, the rout began for Slovakia…

On a power play, Roope Hintz restored Finland’s two-goal lead with a deflection that looked too high. It was very close, but the goal stood. And 40 seconds later, Kaapo Kakko took advantage of a turnover to fire off an extremely accurate shot.

Shortly after, Kapanen was alone in front of the Slovak goalie and hit the post hard. Kapanen really had a solid game and clearly should have been used from the start of the tournament. Who knows, maybe he could have made the difference against Canada?

With five minutes left to play, the Slovaks went all out by pulling their goalie, but the Finns quickly sealed the victory. Joel Armia scored into the empty net, and interestingly, Armia finished as Finland’s leading scorer with a total of seven points (tied with Sebastian Aho).

Finally, Erik Haula added another empty-net goal to make it 6-1.
The Finns and Kapanen took home the bronze medal in this matchup. Kapanen had an excellent first Olympic game. Slafkovsky also had a strong game, especially at the end.

Slaf was overused at the end of the game (he probably played five of the last six minutes of the game in hopes of scoring a goal). He ultimately finished the game with 22:39 of ice time, averaging one minute and one second per shift. He also generated five shots, three of which were very good scoring opportunities. See you tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. for the gold medal game between Canada and the United States.

In brief

– Interesting.

– To be continued.

— Well.

This is the message he left behind: pic.twitter.com/kVaimexhjM

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) February 21, 2026

— What a game by the Japanese player.