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Tic-tac-toe.

What else is there to say?

Russia defeated Finland 4-0 in the semi-final of the world hockey championships here Friday and it not only looked as simple as child's play, at times the Colisée Pepsi looked more like a board game than a hockey rink.

The Russians struck in the first period when Finland's Saku Koivu, of all people, coughed up the puck in the Russian zone and three gifted Russians — Sergei Fedorov, Alexander Ovechkin and Alexander Semin — flew down the ice. Four pinpoint passes later, Fedorov had an empty net to drop the puck into.

"It was a little surprising to me," said Fedorov as he discussed the jaw-dropping passing plays of his two young Washington Capitals teammates.

"Usually they shoot."

One period later, it looked like the same board move all over again. But this time it was another Russian line - Sergei Zinoviev, Andrei Markov and Danis Zaripov combining on a similar play - with Zaripov enjoying the empty net shot.

The Russians didn't even have top scoring threat Ilya Kovalchuk in the lineup. He was serving the second of a two-game suspension - but will be available for the next, and final, game.

A disappointed Doug Shedden, the Finnish coach, thought "it could have been a 0-0 game going into the third period," but it wasn't. And when the Finns got called for too many men on the ice, a hard shot by Russian captain Alexei Morozov blew past goaltender Niklas Backstrom and the game was over, absolutely.

Ovechkin called the third Russian tally "The winning goal" and, in a way, he was right.

"They stopped playing."

"What can you do?" Shedden said of the embarrassing too-many-men penalty.

Russian goaltender Evgeny Nabokov, who faced only 23 shots, few of them dangerous, seemed unimpressed with the opposition.

"I didn't think the semi-finals would be easy," he said, "but at the same time, we controlled the game."

The Finns were clearly beaten from the point of the third Russian goal on, with Maxim Sushinskiy scoring an empty net goal late in the game to take the score to 4-0 and send the Russians into Sunday's gold-medal game.

Russia has not won the World Championship since 1993.

"If you want to look back 30 years," said Ovechkin, "we beat everybody. If you look back 15 years, Canada beat everybody. Right now we don't want to talk history."

Ovechkin, the young NHL sensation, was all over the ice this afternoon but could not score despite some spectacular individual efforts.

"I play for my country," he said. "I play for my people.

"I know right now all Russia is watching."

The Finns, meanwhile, will now play today for the bronze medal - and promised full effort.

"We'd rather finish third than fourth," said Shedden.