Finnish Player Hits Linesman With Thrown Helmet At World Junior Championship

The World Junior Championship is one of the biggest tournaments in all of hockey, so you can understand why it might draw some emotion out of players.

However, the key is to keep that emotion in check, and it's safe to say that Finland's Veeti Vaisanen — a Utah Hockey Club prospect — did not do that.

The Finns took on Latvia — one of the most surprising teams of the tournament by handing host nation Canada a stunning loss last week and secured a quarter-final berth — in each team's final group stage game.

This one was pretty much all Finland, which won this one 3-0 and set themselves up for a likely second-place finish in their group.

But late in the game, Vaisanen was called for roughing, and on the way to the sin bin, he made his frustrations known and tried to throw his helmet but drilled the linesman right in the leg with it.

Like they mentioned in that clip, the linesman did a great job of not overreacting, because he certainly could have.

I just can't believe that Vaisanen didn't get a little bonus penalty box time for that. I mean, the game is pretty much out of reach for Latvia at this point, but how could they only be off-setting roughing minors and nothing else after the other team's player chucked his bucket and hit an official?

Latvia was already on a powerplay when this happened, but if I was behind their bench (by the way my email is always open; I was an assistant coach for a bantam team that won a district championship. Holler at me, I hear Latvian food is good… probably), I'd want anything that could possibly kick-start a rally.

We still have some seeding situations for the quarterfinals that need working out, but both Finland and Latvia will be in them. The next round gets underway on January 2.