Justus Annunen Ends the IIHF World Championship With Shutout, Wins Gold Medal
When the IIHF World Championship began, Team Finland may have had a different plan than it ended up having for who its starting goaltender was going to be.
The roster consisted of goalies Joonas Korpisalo of the Boston Bruins and Justus Annunen of the Nashville Predators. Finland knew going into the two-week event that it would give both netminders chances to start games, but Annunen quickly separated himself as the top option to start in net.
Annunen found his rhythm as the starting goalie, starting five of the seven games during group play before the IIHF World Championship Tournament. Annunen then led Team Finland through the quarterfinal and semifinal round of the tournament phase. He posted an impressive 6-1 record going into the championship round against Team Switzerland.
Annunen’s lone loss leading into Sunday’s game came against Switzerland in the final game of group play. But Sunday, he got revenge.
Annunen was rock steady as he led Team Finland to the gold medal in the rematch against Team Switzerland. The Finnish beat the Swiss 1-0 in overtime. While Konsta Helenius scored the lone goal to win gold a little over 10 minutes into overtime, the story of the game was Annunen.
Annunen saved all 22 shots that Switzerland shot his way. A perfect 100% save percentage in the game his country needed him most.
All together, Annunen won seven of the eight games that he started in goal and had a save percentage of 93.3%. One of his key saves came against his teammate and Team Switzerland standout Roman Josi. Perhaps that performance could be enough to help catapult the Nashville Predators to have a better season during the 2026-2027 season, but that is a question to be answered later, though.
For now, Annunen gets to rest in the glory of winning a gold medal for his home country.
Even though Josi did not carry his home country to a gold medal, he also had a great two weeks in Switzerland. He helped lead the Swiss to an undefeated record in group play and was the top seed in the IIHF Tournament. Sunday’s championship was the only loss Switzerland suffered.
Josi does walk away as a silver medalist. The Predators can now say that they hold a IIHF gold medalist and silver medalist. After the game, Josi also ended up being crowned the IIHF Tournament’s Most Valuable Player.
All in all, it was a successful trip overseas for Nashville Predators players. The Predators has six players play in the IIHF World Championship and two of them walked away as medalist after leading their countries to the championship game.
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Graham Baakko is a lead writer for both Nashville Predators On SI and Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham graduated from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as an intern for GamecockCentral.