Slovakia close to elimination after another loss

The host Slovakia lost again and is stuck with 0 points in the Qualification Round. All hope isn’t lost though. It could be enough with wins against Finland and Denmark to reach the quarter finals.

The Czechs secured a playoff spot with the 3-2 win in front of 9313 fans.

"What an atmosphere tonight! That was unbelievable experience", says Czech Head Coach Alois Hadamczik. "We played very well tonight, we had a lot of time a puck at our sticks and created plenty of scoring chances. For that, we did not score many goals, but I really appreciate we won this game."

Czech Republic took the lead in the first period when Marek Zidlicky scored a power play goal when he deflected a shot from Patrik Elias. The first of three points by Elias tonight.

The crown was ecstatic at 2:54 of the second period when Ladislav Nagy tied the game for Slovakia when he picked up a rebound from a shot by Lubomir Visnovsky.

A minute into the last period the Czech’s took the lead back when Martin Havlat’s shot surprised Jaroslav Halak in the Slovak net.

Patrik Elias scored 3-1 three minutes later.

Desperate Slovaks needed a win and at 49:29 they got to play on power play for the third time of the night but didn’t succeed to score. Lubomir Visnovsky was frustrated: "Our power-plays were terrible. We practiced them a lot, we talk about them all the time, but it is not working. I am very frustrated now. I havent been this way since I left Edmonton Oilers."


Lubomir Visnovsky
Photo: Roman Kucera

The second Slovak goal was scored by Tomas Surovy at 57:28. Then Halak was pulled, but no more goals were scored.

"We had our gameplan, but we kept that only for the first twenty minutes. Then the Czechs got the game under control and were the better team", says the Slovak Head Coach Glen Hanlon.

Jaromir Jagr wasn’t happy with the scoring: "We played two periods like FC Barcelona, but we were missing Messi on our roster. We had many scoring chances, but could not convert them."

 

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