Slovakia ends Belarus’ dreams about quarterfinals

Belarus knew that this was a must win situation for them if they still want to keep up hopes for the quarterfinals. Still Slovakia started the game better and took control of the game from the very beginning. Belarus defenders couldn't make their game openings properly because of active Slovakian forechecking. After 6.45 Andrej Sekera's wrist shot from the blueline surprised Belarus goalie Vitali Koval who couldn't really see the shot behind the mask. Later on Belarus got also two powerplays when first Tomas Surovy got 2+10 minutes for checking from behind and later Ivan Baranka took 2 minutes for hooking. However both PP's were pretty poor without real scoring chances.

In the second period Slovakia speeded up one more tick their game and finalized the game. Slovakia scored four goals in the first seven minutes. First Branko Radivojevic scored in a situation where puck accidentally stopped on referees skates in Belarus' zone and shortly after that Vitali Koval couldn't stop Michel Miklik's weak backhander. Tomas Kopecky scored one more only 5.48 into the period and Kari Heikkilä took timeout for Belarus. That didn't help much and one minute after that Juraj Mikus scored one more for Slovakia. Belarus had lost its focus totally and Slovakia used their momentum perfect playing cat and mouse with team Belarus. Alexei Kalyuzhny scored Belarus' only goal of the game five minutes before the end of second period.

Belarus coach Kari Heikkilä said that they lost the game during the first seven minutes in the second period when they allowed four goals to Slovakia: "We can play good games for 50 minutes but then there comes black moment, like today in the second period, where we loose the game. That is something we have to work on in the future."

Slovakia's coach Vladimir Vujtek didn't expect such a clear number from this game: "We were sure good prepared for the game but still these numbers are a bit more than I expected".

It was a bit surprising how big the difference was between these two teams based on previous games. And Belarus even got Kostitsins in their line-up. On the other hand NHL players don't mean automatically improvement in teams' game like we have seen several times during past years with all teams. Of course on Kostitsins' defence we have to admit that they have been sitting in the airplane for the past 48 hours and jet-lag on top of that so you can't ask too much. Belarus played four good games earlier in this tournament but now they played their worst one when they should have played their best one.

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