{"id":458108,"date":"2026-02-14T18:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T18:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/458108\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T18:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T18:56:27","slug":"finnish-players-mused-replacing-head-coach-pennanen-with-panthers-maurice-over-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/458108\/","title":{"rendered":"Finnish players mused replacing head coach Pennanen with Panthers\u2019 Maurice over summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Despite a convincing 4-1 win over rival Sweden on Friday, Finland\u2019s men\u2019s hockey coach Antti Pennanen apparently did not have the support of at least some of his players entering Milano Cortina 2026, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.is.fi\/jaakiekko\/art-2000011814195.html\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.is.fi\/jaakiekko\/art-2000011814195.html\">according to a report from Sami Hoffren of Ilta-Sanomat.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to Hoffren\u2019s reporting, players began to lose faith in Pennanen, who been the national coach since September of 2023, following Finland\u2019s disappointing last-place performance at last year\u2019s 4 Nations Face-Off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It got to a point over the summer where the team\u2019s top NHL players discussed the possibility of Stanley Cup-winning head coach Paul Maurice taking over bench boss duties for this year\u2019s Olympics in Italy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Maurice, a 59-year-old from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., has led the Florida Panthers to back-to-back NHL championships, but is not part of Canada\u2019s coaching staff in Milan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Finland general manager Jere Lehtinen was aware of the player\u2019s desire to add Maurice, but no formal offer was made to the Canadian coach. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t really have anything to say about it,\u201d Lehtinen told Hoffren in Finnish. \u201cWell, of course we have our own team here and it would be a different matter if there was something concrete. I don\u2019t have anything more to say about that, since there hasn\u2019t been anything concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Finland\u2019s Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell and Niko Mikkola all play for Maurice in Florida. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov would have been on Team Finland as well, but has not played this season due to a knee injury. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Finland was eliminated in the quarter-final round at the 2025 World Men\u2019s World Hockey Championship. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Finland has split their first two games of Milano Cortina 2026 and wrap up their Group B schedule on Saturday against host Italy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a convincing 4-1 win over rival Sweden on Friday, Finland\u2019s men\u2019s hockey coach Antti Pennanen apparently did&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5102],"tags":[4759,62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-458108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-panthers","11":"tag-floridapanthers","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116070514282270005","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}