QUEBEC CITY, Canada (AFP) - Sergei Fedorov scored the game winner and Evgeny Nabokov made 24 saves for the shutout as Russia beat Finland 4-0 Friday to reach the final of the World Ice Hockey Championships.
Russia advance to Sunday's final where they will meet the winner of the other semi-final between Canada and Sweden.
Alexei Morozov, Maxim Sushinskiy and Danis Zaripov also scored for Russia who have one of the longest gold medal droughts of the traditional hockey giants going back to 1993.
The Russians also avenged a 2-1 overtime loss to the Finns in last year's semis.
"It was an unbelievable game for us," Ovechkin said.
Russia fired 27 shots at Finnish goaltender Niklas Backstrom who had his hands full with the most explosive offence of all the 16 teams in the tournament.
They also got solid goaltending from San Jose Sharks star Nabokov who joined the team during the round-robin after injuries disrupted their goaltending rotation at the start of the tournament.
"Evgeny is the best in the world and this year he is more experienced and is playing better," said Russian coach Vyacheslav Bykov.
Fedorov opened the scoring for Russia who took advantage of a mistake by Finland at their own blueline to score the best goal of the game with 13:41 gone in the first period.
Finnish forward Saku Koivu fell at his own blueline and Russians picked it up and scored on a three-on-one. After a series of passes up the ice the goal culminated a three-way passing play between Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Fedorov.
Semin acted as the quarterback on the play from the right side, giving the puck back to Ovechkin in the high slot. Ovechkin then passed it back to Semin who slid it across the top of the crease to Fedorov who had an open net.
"Semin saw me there and just threw the rocket over there," Fedorov said.
Zaripov made it 2-0 just under four minutes gone in the second on another three-way pass play involving his linemates.
Just like the first goal the Russia used a series of cross-ice passes to get Backstrom out of position. Zaripov fired a perfectly placed wrist shot from the right face off circle that hit the far post and went in.
It was all part of the Russian game plan to wait for the Finns to make mistakes and then break out of their own end on odd man rushes.
"They have a big strong defence and they do such a good job of moving the puck it is difficult to get anything going against them," Finnish coach Doug Shedden said.
Fedorov said the task now is to forget this win and start thinking about the final.
"The last game is the toughest game of the tournament. It has been a long two and a half weeks to play under this pressure," he said. "You have to forget the previous nine games and recuperate and get a fresh mind for the final game."
