Finland Beats Slovakia, Advances to 2022 Men's Olympic Hockey Gold-Medal Game

Sakari Manninen's first-period goal, Harri Pesonen's empty-netter and Harri Sateri's 28-save shutout propelled the Finland men's national hockey team to a 2-0 win over Slovakia in the semifinals at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Finland will now advance to the gold-medal game, where it will face the winner of the semifinal between the Russian Olympic Committee and Sweden.

Manninen scored at 15:56 in the first off assists from Petteri Lindbohm and Sami Vatanen, giving him four goals against Slovakia in these Olympics.

The 30-year-old forward netted a hat trick in a 6-2 win over Slovakia in group play.

He's also been good otherwise, adding a pair of assists in a 4-3 comeback win over Sweden to close group play and contributing another helper in Finland's 5-1 quarterfinal victory against Switzerland.

Finland appeared primed to go up 2-0 in the second period after going on a five-on-three power play for 73 seconds. Peter Ceresnak committed a tripping penalty 8:35 into the frame, and Pavol Regenda went to the box for the same infraction at 9:22.

However, Slovakia's penalty kill persevered and kept the score 1-0 heading into the final intermission.

Finland went on the power play again in the third period after Slovakia's third tripping penalty. Kristian Pospisil went to the box at 1:21, but the Finns could not take advantage.

Slovakia ramped up the pressure in the latter portion of the third period and pulled goaltender Patrik Rybar, who had 25 saves, for an extra skater with under two minutes remaining.

But Pesonen iced the game with a tap-in empty-net goal at 19:21.

Finland entered this matchup with an undefeated 4-0 record and an 18-7 goal differential. In addition to its aforementioned matchups, Finland also took down Latvia 3-1 in group play.

Slovakia scratched and clawed its way to the semifinals. It opened group play with the 6-2 loss to Sweden before falling 4-1 to Sweden. Slovakia rebounded with a 5-2 group-play win over Latvia and then entered the playoff round, where it took down Germany 4-0.

The undefeated United States team was up next in the quarterfinals, but Slovakia won 3-2 after a shootout.

The gold-medal matchup will occur on Saturday at 11:10 p.m. ET (Sunday at 12:10 p.m. CST).

Finland is fighting for its first-ever Olympic gold medal in hockey. It made the gold-medal game once before in 2006, but Sweden defeated the Finns 3-2.

Slovakia will play the loser of the ROC-Sweden matchup in the bronze-medal game at 8:10 a.m. ET Saturday (9:10 p.m. CST).