Netherlands advances in Olympic Qualifying

Tony Demelinne gets the game winning goal in the shootout and the Netherlands advance to the next round. Michal Kars also scored in the shootout to take away any chance Hungary had to advance. Janos Hari missed his opportunity and Csaba Kovacs was stopped after a disappointing loss in front of the boisterous Budapest home crowd. The Netherlands started slow again giving Hungary’s Hari a power play at the 8:00 mark in the first. Holland had only three shots on goal at that point. Coming alive, the Dutch side scored three unanswered goals by Postma, van den Heuvel and Kevin Bruijsten. Balizs only saw eight shots in the first, but let in three and Hungary looked in a bit of trouble going into the first intermission. Hungary dug deep to score three of their own in the second period. Ladislav Sikorcin scored a power play goal, and Arpad Mihaly and Marton Vas added one each. Raphael Joly, who had a great tournament, added one of his own to send both sides tied into the final twenty minutes. Nick de Jong for the Netherlands kicked off the scoring in the third, receiving an assist from Joly. Hungary answered with two goals in twenty seconds by Janos Vas and Balazs Ladanyi. The crowd in Budapest almost pulled the Hungarian side through, but Jordy van Oorschot tied it up with 1:30 left to play. Hungary took momentum into the overtime period, outshooting the Netherlands 4-1, but Meierdres came up big when he needed to and carried his side into the penalty round. Neither goaltender was tested in their first two matches and it showed as both keepers hovered around a poor 80% save percentage on the evening. Balizs did not stop either of the shootout shots that were on goal by the Dutch. The Netherlands move on to the qualifier in Bietigheim-Bissigen, Germany, where they will take on the home side, Italy and Austria starting 7 February. Hungary will have another opportunity to impress their enthusiastic hockey fans and make an impression on the world when they host the Division I Group A Men’s IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships in April 2013. In the consolation game today, Lithuania grabbed a win against the woeful Croatian side. Igor Lazic scored first for Croatia, but that would be their only goal of the match. Lithuania added three; two from Verenis and another by Kazlauskas. Croatia fell apart at the end as Sijan was sent off for a game misconduct and they picked up 34 minutes in penalties in the last 2:30 of the game. Lithuania put 52 shots on Tomljenovic who played strong at times over the weekend, but received no help from his defense. Follow Tim Bourcier on Twitter @bourciertm and check out his blog Sport Exec in Training at bourciertm.wordpress.com.

 

Advanced player search

Tweets by @eurohockey