Goalie thriller

The teams returned players who didn't play last game in the group stage to the line-up: David Musil, Jakub Culek from the Czech side and Mikhail Grigorenko from the Russian. The goalies were the same and it was a battle of Petr Mrazek and Andrei Vasilevsky, both showed a great performance at the tournament before.

The Czech goalie continued to play in a heroic way by stopping 6 fast shot in a power-play with Riha in the penalty box for slashing. Then only the post of the net stopped Yevgeny Kuznetsov's one-on-one after a great pass from Grigory Zheldakov from the Russian net to the blue line at 13:20.
Russia made 16 shots in the first, most of them weren't so dangerous as they must be.

In the second Czech got the game and outshot the enemies 9-0 in the first 6 minutes. Russian defensemen lost Jakub Culek in front of the net who opened the scoring with a pass from Tomas Hertl at 27:16. A rare Russian shot in the second tied the game as Daniil Apalkov came into the the zone and fired a high wrist shot at 32:47.

With 8 minutes remaining in the third Mrazek took an ovation with a great glove save after Sergei Barbashyov's shot after a won faceoff; Barbashyov was one of the unluckiest Russians, who had several scoring chances but didn't use them. Vasilevsky made a nice glove save after Tomas Filippi's shot with 2 minutes left.

When there were only 46.8 seconds to play in regulations Nikita Kucherov took 2 penalty minutes for high-sticking. The Czech didn't score during this short time and the game turned to overtime.

Kucherov returned from the from penalty box, came to the attacking zone and gave a nice pass to a free Grigory Zheldakov who with a quick wrist shot led Russia to the semis.

Now Russia will play against Canada in semis and Czech Republic will face with their neighbor Slovakia in the 5th place game.

 

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