Finland's Women's Hockey Development Has Hit A Cliff

Canada and USA have remained atop the women's hockey ladder for decades due to consistent development year after year. Every age group holds another wave of incoming players ready to compete.

Finland has been the main power from Europe competing for medals at the World Championships and Olympics with regularity. Recently however, other nations, who have worked to redesign their girls and women's hockey systems, including Sweden and Czechia, have closed the gap.

Finland on the other hand, has been treading water, but if recent results at the U-18 level, and the drop in competitiveness in the nation's Auroraliiga are any indication, Finland's legs have grown tired and the prospect pool is sinking.

Last year, Finland narrowly avoided the need to play to be saved in relegation by beating Japan 4-2 in the preliminary round. Japan later fell 5-1 to Slovakia keeping Slovakia in the top division, while sending Japan to Division 1A. 

This year however, Finland has fallen further. They'll finish last in Group B after Slovakia beat the Finns 5-2 in pool play. Barring a miracle, which would require Finland to beat Canada in the quarterfinals, Finland will play Hungary to avoid relegation. After Hungary outshot and outplayed Switzerland, but ran into hot goaltending to fall, it's no guarantee Finland can beat the Hungarian roster.

Finland was outscored 28-3 and outshot 153-48 in the preliminary round, and they'll face another beating by Canada before playing for their future in the top group of the World Championships.

Given the situation, it's no certainty Finland won't, for the first time in the nation's history, be bumped to the Division 1A level next season for international play. It would be a catastrophic fall from grace for the nation. Were Russia not expelled from international competition beginning in 2022, Finland may have already dropped. 

Finland has advanced strong players through their U-18 program in recent seasons. Three players from the 2023 roster – Sanni Vanhanen, Julia Schalin, and Tilli Keranen – are thriving at the NCAA level, and Schalin and Vanhanen will play at the 2026 Olympics. 

For many of Finland's top young players however, their development appears to be stalling. The nation has a few players per roster capable of moving on to higher levels, but the bottom end of their depth has dropped off significntly.

At the 2025 U-18 World Championships, no player scored more than a single goal in the tournament, and their leading scorer had only two points. This year, Tinja Tapani has been Finland's top scorer, notching two goals, but the team managed only three goals total in the preliminary round. They have other promising players like Emmi Lopenen, Aino Lehikoinen, Senja Silvonen, Viivi-Maija Ruonakoski, Yenna Kolmonen, and Viola Kärkkäinen, but the drop in development at a national scale in Finland is beginning to show.

The nation's decline is not in the hands of these young players who are competing hard at the U-18 World Championships, it's on Finland's governance, development model, and federation.

Finland's Auroraliiga has bled talent year after year, and now sits as one of Europe's least competitive women's leagues. The league is not professional, and top talent chooses many options, including Sweden's SDHL, Switzerland's PostFinance Women's League, Germany's DFEL, and Eastern Europe's EWHL ahead of Auroraliiga.

The only members of Finland's Olympic roster coming from Auroraliiga are Emma Nuutinen, who leads the league in scoring with 62 points in 26 games, defender Elli Suoranta, and goaltender Anni Keisala. Ten members of Finland's Olympic roster are playing in Sweden, while the remainder of their roster comes from Switzerland, the NCAA, and PWHL.

Auroraliiga's second leading scorer, Barbora Juříčková is still a teenager, and has yet to begin her NCAA career, where she's slated to play at St. Lawrence University next season. The league has lost star power every season, including watching national team players such as Michaela Pejzlova (Czechia), Elisa Holopainen (Finland), Julia Liikala (Finland), Sanni Rantala (Finland), Julia Schalin (Finland), Sanni Vanhanen (Finland), Clara Rozier (France), Siiri Yrjölä (Finland), and Tereza Pistekova (Czechia) all leave following the 2023-24 season. It was the last year the league boasted a significant presence of top players.

Auroraliiga has not implemented checking, where other women's leagues in Sweden, Switzerland, the EWHL, Norway and elsewhere. Nations that have implemented checking to girls and women's level have reported increase competitiveness across the board. 

There has also been a hesitation among Finland's best to come to the PWHL. It's believed a larger group including Petra Nieminen, Viivi Vainikka, Nelli Laitinen, and Jennina Nylund will all take their shot at the PWHL next season joining Ronja Savolainen, Michelle Karvinen, Susanna Tapani, and Sanni Ahola, but Finland will remain the nation with more veterans outside the PWHL than any other medal contender. It's a plan that will catch up on their medal hopes sooner or later as the gap between the level of play in the PWHL and Europe widens. Finland needs players like Vainikka, Sanni Rantala, and Elisa Holopainen in the PWHL competing against the best soon. With more expansion coming to the PWHL, the SDHL and other European leagues will only get weaker, particularly as the SDHL continues their move to restrict the number of import players each team can carry.

The largest factor for Finland however, is the lack of pay and support for women's hockey players in Auroraliiga, making the league a valid option typically reserved for players who do not wish to pursue higher levels in the game. The level of play is closer now to top minor hockey feeder leagues in North America that send players to U Sports and the NCAA, not a space that college aged or post-collegiate players can continue to develop if they hope to make an impact for Finland internationally.

For the foreseeable future, Finland's senior national team will remain competitive. They'll lose veteran stars like Jenni Hiirikoski, Michelle Karvinen, and Susanna Tapani before too long, but the rest of Finland's roster has at least another Olympic cycle left before things get dire. 

Luckily for Finland, many of the nations young players have started to see the need to leave to develop, which now includes 15 full time NCAA players. Next year, Tuuli Tallinen and Pauliina Salonen will be the top Finnish players heading to NCAA hockey at Minnesota-Duluth, while Sofia Kari and Hilda Arhammar Pakarinen are also headed to North America.

Unless Finland finds a way to fix their development problem from the youth level up, and fast, however, there will come a time in the not too distant future where the competitiveness and parity the nation had built among the best in the world will fade. It's a situation international hockey, and Finnish hockey fans will surely want to avoid.