Finland could never recover from that loss to North America

It's a short tournament.

This was the simple rationale behind much of the internal processing among executives and players at the World Cup of Hockey. It's why the Americans misguidedly designed their roster with one opponent in mind. It's why a six-minute stretch of hockey is the reason we'll probably never see Connor McDavid on a line with Auston Matthews again.

And it's why Finland failed to ever recover from its embarrassing loss to North America.

"The first game was like ‘Game Off’ right from the start. North America played great. They won every battle, everything. They scored four goals, but I think they should have scored eight."

That was Aleksander Barkov's response when asked what contributed to the Finns being limited to one goal in three World Cup games. One lousy goal, and one hardly worth celebrating, as all it accomplished was cutting down the largest deficit they built for themselves.

Barkov didn't have an answer as to why 81 of the team's 82 shots were stopped by opposing goalies, or why moments after Mikael Granlund hit the post behind Sergei Bobrovsky, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ivan Telegin scored 79 seconds apart for Russia to zap what was left of Finland's fight.

But the incoming face of the Suomi knew where it all went wrong, harkening back to the nation's loss to North America when asked to assess why the offense never arrived.

More often than not, Finland's the wild card in these tournaments. It's a nation that doesn't produce high-end players in limitless quantities like Canada, but one that, without fail, provides fits for teams that look stronger on paper.

A quick glance at Finland's roster, and it was natural to reason the same, but it was different this time. The nation has been riding a wave of international success of late, not frustrating teams with tactical organization, but with a juggernaut attack.

Patrik Laine and Sebastian Aho, two players who were, in fact, in Toronto this week, led an offense that produced 35 goals in seven games, and scored on better than 37 percent of its power-play opportunities en route to gold at the 2016 World Junior Championship.

Then several months later, Finland's World Championship roster, which paled in comparison to its World Cup entry, produced more than four goals per contest before being shut out by Canada in the final game of a tournament in which Laine was named MVP.

"We just couldn’t find the net," forward Teuvo Teravainen told theScore about Finland's performance at the World Cup. "I think we created a lot of good chances, but it just didn’t bounce (our way) in the tournament for us. We just needed to get that ugly one, maybe, and then we could get more goals.

"But it's a short tournament, and sometimes you just can't find the net."

There it is again.

Finland, though, would indeed frustrate in the end.

At the end of a game that ended appropriately with Sami Vatanen reluctant to emerge from behind his own net, instead delicately stick-handling the puck until the horn sounded, Finland had earned a small measure of revenge with its impotent effort against the Russians.

The loss meant that the North American team that spoiled Finland's bid was now out of contention, too.