Canada meets Slovakia in the Semi Finals!
It’s been a busy few days and I haven’t had much time at my computer but I’m here now and have tons of news. I’m going to keep things simple because the situation is pretty cut and dry. Our team assumed we had wouldn’t have much trouble in the round robin because of the competition in our pool. We weren’t shocked at the fact that none of our opponents in the first round put up much of a fight. After beating France, we rolled past Liechtenstein 10 - 1 and then Australia, 11 - 1. Our defense is playing solid and our Quebec players and power play are tearing it up on offense. The reality is that we haven’t really been tested since our exhibition matches.
This tournament can pretty easily be divided into three tiers based on the quality of the teams. In the top, Canada, Slovakia and Spain; in the middle, France, Australia and Liechtenstein; in the lower Korea, Serbia and Georgia. The key match in the round robin is clearly the one between Slovakia and Spain that we just finished watching - in the semi finals, the winner would play Australia and the loser, Canada - this is based on us finishing #1 and Australia #2 in our pool. Given the disparity in the quality of the teams, finishing at the top of the B Pool would be extremely important for Slovakia and Spain. Our team’s impression was that Slovakia is stronger than Spain but that the match would be tightly fought. The game was a complete
rollercoaster.
Slovakia dominated in the early minutes, scoring once and squandering many opportunities. Spain made mistake after mistake and looked horribly uncomfortable but things started to change as Slovakia took silly penalties. Spain notched the tying goal and eventually took a lead; one weak goal that appeared to be tipped and one on a bad turnover. Slovakia eventually tied the game but had their rhythm thrown off by the success the Spaniards had. At some point it seemed as though both teams had become rather equal; no one team dominating the other as odd chances were exchanged.
In an unexpected turn, Spain capitalized to take the lead 3 - 2 and then again on a horrible turnover to extend the lead to 4 -2 while in the third period. Slovakia was still clearly the more skilled team and had the advantage of a packed house of chanting fans behind them; we knew it wasn’t over. They marched down the court again and again and it seemed as though Spain was content to just try to kill the last five minutes. In an odd series of plays, the Slovaks got the ball to the front of the net and when it was jarred loose, a free man banged it in. They had new life with the lead cut to one, 4-3.
The Slovaks pushed and pushed, creating several perfect opportunities - I was literally jumping up and down in my seat because the action was so intense and it looked like on three or four occasions, they pretty much had the ball in the back of the net. Like in the first period, the finish just wasn’t there as the minutes became seconds and soon there just wasn’t time to generate another opportunity. Heartbroken, the Slovaks choked in front of their home crowd. They out-chanced and out shot their opponents but fell to a very hot Spanish goalie and some bad luck finding the back of the net. We couldn’t have asked for a more entertaining game to watch.
What does this mean for us? Well, we will play the Slovaks in the semifinals tomorrow at 2:30 pm (8:30 am EST). We believe they are the tougher of the two but ultimately if we want the top spot we will have to beat both teams. The guys were kind of hoping for a storybook final with the hometown crowd going crazy but that won’t be the case. We are all very excited for tomorrow’s game and know what we have to do. We do face one disadvantage though; we haven’t been tested by a quality opponent since we played our exhibition matches. Many questions are left to be answered as a result. Have the defensive issues we encountered in the exhibition matches been answered or have we simply not faced a solid offence since? Have we found our scoring touch and taken our offence to the next level or were we simply privy to weaker lines of defense? I am pretty sure it’s some combination of both and at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what the answer is - tomorrow one team will move onto the finals and we know what we need to do in order to make sure that is us.
Hope you can catch the match tomorrow - we need all of the support we can get!
