Having problems with themselves, still Russians beats Denmark

The starting period in Ostrava went exactly according to expectations. Russians dominated the game and Denmark concentrated on defending the scoreless state, but two combinations of Sbornaja Komanda appeared to be above their strenghts.

The opening goal came after eleven minutes in powerplay of Russia. Firstly, Sebastian Dahm, Denmark`s starting goalie, enjoyed to catch Yevgeni Malkin`s hard wrist shot into his glove, but just the first further shot ended in his net already. Artemi Panarin received a pass from Yevgeni Dadonov and sent it into the net by a one-timer.

Another one-timer and another goal in the net of Denmark. Sergei Mozyakin scored his first goal in the tournament after getting the puck from Malkin who did a great job behind Dahm`s net to create the scoring chance for Mozyakin.

Then both team played quite sleepy. Russians were skating around with the puck, only pretending some interest in the game. Danes could take over the activity and knock on Russia`s backdoor, but better were silent. It appeared like if they were happy with quite merciful score 2-0.

Or maybe it was done by Denmark on purpose, because easier you may kill the dragon while it sleeps. However this soporific attitude worked well anyway: In the 30th minute, Morten Green skated into Sergei Bobrovski`s goalie crease intending to shoot, but lost the puck under pressure of defender, however the puck ended behind the goal line, in Bobrovski`s net.

Danes then increased the tempo looking for an equalizer. However two minutes before end of the middle session they made a mistake while changing the shifts, played with six men and the following powerplay was used by Yevgeni Dadonov to make it 3-1.

Another powerplay ten minutes to go in the third period helped out Denmark. Shirkovov behind his net wanted to send a long pass to Tikhonov to give offer a breakaway, but the pass ended on the stick of Thomas Spelling who had plenty of time to prepare himself a hard slapshot to make it 3-2.

Next minutes Russia presented with poor playmaking and offended with three consecutive icings, which is not what you usually want to do, when defending a one-goal lead. But finally, Russians did a heads-up and scored twice in the 58th minute to terminate all doubts who is going to win this game.

While acknowledging too easy attitude of Russia to the game, many unnecessary technical fouls of its players and poor playmaking in the third period, the final result 5-3 is so cruel to Danes.

Tweets by @eurohockey