The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Arpon Basu on Finland's Performance at 4 Nations

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Arpon Basu on Patrik Laine's tournament, Matinpalo being a last-minute addition, lack of development for Finnish defenceman, and much more...Shout out to our sponsors!👍🏼Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/Reach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Flames_Nation🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoff Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Learn more at Fizz.ca. Switch to Fizz. From talking about Sweden, let's talk about Finland. Our good friend Arpan Basu, a senior writer at the Athletic, covering the Montreal Canadiens and for this tournament's talk about Finland. Our good friend, Arpon Basu, a senior writer at the Athletic covering the Montreal Canadiens. And for this tournament covering team Finland, Arpon joins me now on the sheet. Arpon, how are you today? Good to see your face and hear your voice. How are you, pal? I'm good, Jeff. How are you doing? I'm glad to be on your new show.

Much, much appreciated. Thanks for, thanks for classing up the joint a little bit here. Arpon, we need a little class, cut a guest here on the program. So much appreciated your attention. I don't know what that says about your other guests, to be honest. Well, I like our, listen, I'll be honest, I love Ufay, but listen, I have, listen, we open the door for Greg Wyshinski every week here on this program. So it's an open door policy on goofiness when he's aboard and, and Berkey comes by every Friday. So as we like to say, let's get ready to grumble with Brian Berk every Friday here on the program.

Okay, let me uh, speaking of grumbling, how much grumbling is there around and has there been around Team Finland during this tournament? You're covering Team Finland for the athletic. Your thoughts on the team and most specifically your thoughts on that near comeback against Canada. First of all, the Lindell goal can't go in. Like that's a Bennington story. But then Granland, a whole, like talk about like, Dallas Stars pro scouts know what they're doing. Like that's been demonstrated over and over and over again. But just your thoughts on that near comeback

and a pair of goals by the Dallas Star forward. Well, Michael Granland, I think did himself some favors. He's a he's a free agent this summer. Obviously, that's what got him. So good for him. I think overall for Finland, though, is the problem was that their primary source of offense was Michael Granlin and no disrespect to him at all. But the elder statesman on the team, you know, this is a core of Alexander Barkov, Miko Rantinen, Rope Hintz, Patrick Lainey, Sebastian Svoboda. These guys did not produce at a level that was going to allow Finland to compete in this tournament. That's just the reality of it. And I think their coach, Antti Penninen, who is a super interesting guy, once you got to sort of interact, I got to interact

with him for a while. You know, he said something interesting in Finnish. One of the Finnish reporters told me because he was asked specifically about Aho and Hintz not producing. They didn't score a goal between them. Hintz didn't have a point in the tournament. And he sort of took that blame on himself. He never split them up. He kept them on the same line the whole time.

But the reality for Finland is you cannot go into a tournament and get two goals total out of Patrick Lainey, Alexander Barkov, Mikko Renten, and Rope Hintz and Sebastian Ahl. That's just, they can't, they don't have that luxury. There's no wiggle room for them. So I think that's the main takeaway for Finland is that if they're going to compete a year from now in the Olympics, they're going to need these guys to step up far more than they did in this tournament. Not to say they play badly, but the bar for them is offense because there's not a lot of it outside of that group. Obviously,

Grandland had a great tournament, but the rest of the lineup is pretty much two way defensive guys who are going to try and sort of win their shifts and or at least come out even on their shifts So the offensive guys can go out and win the game and they just kind of didn't do that in the tournament you know one of the um, like this is this this is a question that you are uniquely qualified to answer or have a Educated thought on I'm just gonna throw a name at you I'm not gonna ask I'm going to back it up with a question. It's very irresponsible as a host to do.

Just get a lob a name out at you and see the reaction and see what you have to say. But here we go. Patrick Lyon. I'm going to be honest with you. Um, you know, I was looking forward to try to get to know him. Um, obviously he gets hurt in the preseason Comes back the Canadian. He's he's not been super available in Montreal Every time he is it's a big deal With a ton of reporters surrounding him and never really had a conversation with him alone You know and he's He's a unique guy, you know, his teammates seem to like him

I remember you're a Slav Koski right after he came back from injury talking about the crazy stuff he says on the bench, he wouldn't actually tell us what it was, but that was kind of my first way of learning that Patrick Lainey is a unique cat is just not only Yaroslav Koski, but a few other guys just talking about the random stuff he says on the bench that you don't hear from other players.

And you know, you see how he's dressed. Like he's his own man, you know? And I think he's pretty good in his own skin, but you know, he can be a frustrating guy to coach. And I think Montreal's gotten a crash course in that, you know, his first 10, 12 games popped a goal a game pretty much, you know, the power play became good solely because of him. Or effective, I should say, I wouldn't use the word good, but it was it produced goals, because he can produce goals out

of nothing. And in this tournament, you know, he played three games. Pennington described two of them as pretty okay, which is the most lukewarm compliment you could possibly offer as a coach. Pretty okay. Pretty okay. He said it twice. Now, I don't know if that's like a language thing. Like he just felt limited in what kind of things he could say, but he used that same term twice after the first game and after the last game against Canada. And the game in between against Sweden, he thought he played really well and I did too.

And he put him, and what was interesting about that is he put him with the Florida Panthers checkers, Anton Lundell and E2 Lusterinan. I've been messing up his name the whole time, but Lusterinan. And it sort of, I think, informed my thinking as to what Patrick Laine might need on a five-on-five basis, like two guys who are going to do the work, be the worker bees, as kind of John Cooper referred to his today, and get him the puck, you know?

And so, so yeah, he's, he's a guy I haven't figured out, Jeff, to be honest with you. You said I'm uniquely qualified to answer it. I don't think I am because I haven't really gotten I mean, the reason I mentioned covering both Finland and the Montreal Canadians, like you've seen, and again, like this has been, like as far as seasons go, it's like, you know, the toilet seat at a stag and dough up and down, up and down, up and down. Like there have been the, as you mentioned, like seven games in a row with a power play goal.

And then there's like five games of floating back checks and the fans saying like, move your feet feet like get going out there Like where is it? And then to the to the other point and I don't necessarily think this is bad because listen if you can score goals That's great. But if you're not scoring goals, what are you giving the team? There's just like just wants to set up and just like everyone else do the work Just get me the puck but if you do get them the puck like there's a good chance that that thing is going in

because you know when you think about scoring from distance, Matthews can do it, there's only a couple of other guys that can, Lionel is one of those guys. Like I've always described his shot as not hard but violent. Like when you see the shot, like it is a violent shot that Patrick Lionel has. But again, if he's not giving you that,

what is he giving you? And here's the question that I have ultimately is what are, cause Montreal fans are smart. You know this, what do Montreal fans do with Patrick Lyon a now? Well, my question is what does Patrick Lyon a do to win back those fans? Listen, he had his first preseason game, you know, he created a sound in the Bell Center that very few players have. Ilya Kovalchuk, when he had a cup of coffee with the Canadians, produced this sound.

PK Subban used to do it regularly. Lane Hudson is doing it now. But this sound of anticipation in the Bell Center, when he touched the puck for the first time, there was a little rush of energy and you can raise it was palpable. You can feel it. So, you know, Montreal fans, yes, they're smart, but they're also wired to want a player like this. What Patrick Lani represents an elite offensive player. They haven't had one in a very long time. Lani represents an elite offensive player. They haven't had one in a very long time. That's why they're going so Gaga watching Ivan Demidov clips from Russia. You know,

they have been dying for a player like this does look good forever. And this is why they went so crazy when they passed on Matt they Mitchcov in the draft, you know, so it's so in terms of what they do with him, like, listen, he didn't get a point in his last eight games heading into the tournament. He got benched in a game in Anaheim, had the lowest ice time on the team in several games. So I think the frustrating thing, if I were his coach, what's aggravating is that there are shifts where he'll go out and he'll do great things without the puck. He will finish his hits. He will back check.

He will create turnovers in defensive zone and get the puck going the other way. Do all the things that you want your forwards to do when they're not scoring, but they only last for individual shifts. They exist in isolation. And so you would like to be able to say that he does that regularly and he doesn't.

The fact is he doesn't, but it's in him. And so as a coach, your job is to get that out of him more often. I think several coaches have failed to do that so far. So it's a valid question to say whether that is actually possible. But you see that the skill set, the hand-eye coordination is just so tantalizing on this guy. Like, he can, his bad shot ability or his bad, his ability to turn bad passes into one-timers makes him very special and very unique. Like, there are very few players who could, if any, who can do that specific thing as

well as he can. It's just doing all the other things that allows them to get into situations to use that skill, getting that out of them on a consistent basis is a challenge to say the least. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk

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Acast.com. We have a question for you in the chat here at our YouTube stream. Energized asking you to share some of your thoughts on someone who's a late addition to this to this team is You know me the Miro Hayskinen factor here Nicholas Matanpalo Of the Ottawa senators finds himself in like what a season it's been for him and then culminating I'm sure if you talked to him a year ago and said hey, you're gonna be playing in the four nations You probably would have scoffed but there he was you ever thought on talked to him two weeks ago. He was scoffed

Honestly like he good point so they so they played in Florida Their last game before the tournament and they got thumped by the Panthers, right? And so he had two options Option number one was to just stay in Florida and enjoy the weather Option number two was this Steve Stales was gonna ask him to go back to Belleville and play some games there Option number three did not exist which was to play in this tournament He didn't know going into that game that he was the person who did know was his opponent that night Alexander Barkov the captain of team Finland He knew going into that game right he kind of joked during the tournament that he never got a chance to line up with Matt and Paulo.

I didn't have the heart to say, well, because he would never be on the ice with you at the same time. But, but, but he said that if he had lined up next to him, he would have maybe he would have maybe slid him a little heads up that, Hey, I'm going to be playing with you in a couple of days. But you know, he stayed in the lineup throughout the tournament. The defense was really a great story for Finland because you came because they came into this tournament, no haste, no wrist alignment, no hack and paw. A position group, they could not afford to lose anybody on.

They lose three of their top four guys. That's tough. And he was one of the big beneficiaries because he didn't play a lot of minutes. He didn't get put in difficult situations. He gave up a lot of goals playing next to a back in Ion who was another injury replacement, but did himself a lot of favors. You know, he did not look bad out there and the plus minus I think is misleading in his case.

I think he was really solid and, and not even as not even a full time NHL or he made sure that a guy like you so Alamaki didn't get a sniff in the tournament. Like he earned his spot over a guy who's an established NHL defenseman. I mean, you know, whatever you think of Alamaki's game, he's an NHL player. So I think Matt and Paolo did themselves a lot of favors and honestly, I don't think it's going to be disregarded when the team for Milan has to be picked just as a depth guy because he played the depth

role really well for them. Let me close with that because that's what I wanted to get to sort of as a crescendo here. What, if anything, can we pull out of Finland's performance at the Four Nations and say, this is why this player is trending towards going to Italy. This is why this player is playing their way off of any type of consideration or is that even fair in a tournament this short? Well listen I mean it's it's my question and I'm not really qualified to answer that is is if they're allowed to take players from Finland would this

team look different? You know, like they don't really have an excess overflow of NHL guys. You know, I guess you could argue maybe Esperi Kakiniemi could have made this team, maybe, but it's borderline and I think you can make arguments either way on that one. Defensively, there's one guy who's played a game in the NHL who was never on this roster,

which is Vili Hanola, and who's obviously had his injury issues and all sorts of other mitigating factors for him. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, they don't, it's not like they left a bunch of guys at home. So this is what they have. Um, so the one wild card is are there guys playing in Liga in Finland that they would be more comfortable with?

But to me, the two guys, and I felt this way even in the playoffs last year, like Lundell and Listerine and like those guys, those guys are what Finland is all about. You know, they're like identity guys for this team. And I think they're gonna look great on this team in Milan as well. I'm glad you mentioned Hanela. I feel I think we all do. Anyone that's followed his career, and so many times he's been false started and been right there and then an injury or something else. It's just like, you know, times he's been false started and been right there and then an injury or something else It's just like you know and he's wanted a trade No bad and he's wanted the changes and he's needed the change of scenery like Winnipeg understands that everybody

understands that and he still just seems like Geez Arp and I feel so awful just like frozen in this spot That has to be so frustrating for Hanala. Like I don't know how you can't cheer for that guy to get himself into a better situation because you know there's a good player there. Yeah and that's you know this is where like there's a window of opportunity for him to make this team next year right I mean but he's got to show it and the fact that you you know, they

didn't bring him there. And they took a guy who spent, you know, more than half the season playing the HL in mountain Paulo had to be a punch, a gut punch for him. You know, it really did. Because this is a first round pick. This is, but, and this was what was interesting, like, at the beginning of the tournament, like I looked into it, and, and he is the last him and Lassie Thompson who both went in the first round of that draft. Those are the last first round defensemen to be drafted out of Finland. Neither of them are playing well Thompson's back in Europe playing in Sweden. And so before them, they were in 2019. I think in 2017 was the Hayskinen draft. So that's a long period of time to not produce any defensemen for a country. But for Hanala, you know, you think of all the promise he had and all the optimism

even Winnipeg had about getting him. We were thrilled at the time. I remember like they were really happy that they were able to nab him. But he's reached an age where it's make or break. I mean, as I mentioned, Thompson same age is already back in Europe. I'm starting to wonder if that's might not be the fate for anal love, but he hasn't really had a fair shot yet. And I would be interested to see him get that at some point. Just remember how much Ottawa wanted Thompson to go to Kelowna that year and just like,

nope, nope, I'm going to your, nope, I'm not going. Arpa, this is a bit of a like, listen, great work covering team Finland for the athletic and so much. Thanks so much for, for hopping on the show today. Continued success and we'll check back as LionA watch continues here once the NHL game start get going again in the, on the weekend. We'll see if you can you can turn things around in Montreal. Thanks as always for stopping by. Lost all ambitions day to day Guess you can call it a ride

I went to the dark man He tried to give me a little medicine I'm like, nah man, that's fine I'm right against those methods but I knew It's me, myself and how this gonna be fixing my mind Do you wanna bet? I turned on the music. I turned on the music.

I turned on the music. I turned on the music. It's enough that I'm better than you sometimes use it. Helping on the days that went wrong. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyberattack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. ACAS powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, everybody. It's Jungle Jim Jerome, and I'm super excited to tell you that Inside we recommend. Championships and of course the Grand Slam of Curling. I'm Warren Hanson our weekly show will bring you five popular segments What's happening around the curling world hot rock topics mailbag? What are you hearing and in the house look out here we come Acast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast calm everywhere. Acast.com. 20th we've got live shows every weekday breaking down the biggest stories, key matchups and covering all the action as it unfolds and you won't want to miss a second so make sure you're subscribed to the Daily Faceoff YouTube channel and follow us on all our social media platforms to stay locked in. We'll be bringing you insider analysis on the ground coverage and maybe even a little chaos

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