France beat Finland for the first time

07 May 2017 | Henrik Lundqvist

What a day in Paris! Florian Hardy was outstanding in the French net and Antoine Roussel scored twice when France beat Finland for the first time ever in a World Championship game. The final score was a clear 5-1 win.

Two days ago Finland just got away with a 3-2 win with a late winning goal against Belarus. Today, against the host France, the problems continued for the Finnish team. This time they couldn't pull things together and even if the shots on goal were 20-6 in favor of the Finns in the third period they weren't close to threaten France.

Pierre-Edouard Bellemareewas named best French player of the game and it was he who opened the scoring in front of 11433 fans in AccorHotels Arena at 14:17.

Finland tied it early in the second period when Mikko Lehtonen beat Florian Hardy. Now everybody expected Finland to march on towards a victory but the French players had other plans. Bellemare assisted Antoine Roussel for 2-1 at 34 minutes of play and five minutes later Valentin Claireaux used a power play to make it 3-1, which was the result after two periods.

In the third period Finland tried hard to get closer but Hardy couldn't be beaten. Instead Antoine Roussel scored his second goal of the game at 48:28 and Damien Fleury added an empty-netter when Finland had pulled their goalie Joonas Korpisalo from the net.

Finland's next game is tomorrow against Czech Republic. France gets to rest one day before they play neighbor Switzerland in an important game in the battle for the quarter final spots.