12/21/24
February 25, 2010
Slovakia advances to semi-final after dethroning Sweden : There will be a new Olympic champion this year as Slovakia moves on after beating Sweden 4-3 on Wednesday night. The win secures Slovakia's highest ever finish at the Olympic Games. Pavel Kubina looks for his hat, Finns knock off Czechs, An IIHF rule designed to protect players' heads cost the Czech Republic an Olympic quarterfinal game against Finland on Wednesday.
posted by tommytrump to olympics at 10:30 AM - 2 comments
With perhaps 3 4 exceptions (Germany, Latvia, Belarus, Norway), there is no team in this year's Olympic hockey that could be taken lightly.
Agreed. I tried to tell that to a few people before it started, but they just assumed it would be the big 4 (Canada/Russia/US/Sweden) and the rest would be stomped.
Even among those teams, they still had some close games with the other 8.
I think if it was a set of 7-game series, Canada would be the heavy favourite. But one game can be a crapshoot if a goaltender has a hot game for a bad team. Just look at how the US did against Switzerland.
posted by grum@work at 12:37 PM on February 25, 2010
With perhaps 3 exceptions (Germany, Latvia, Belarus), there is no team in this year's Olympic hockey that could be taken lightly. Conversely, there is no team that can be considered a guaranteed lock, or even highly competitive, against any other (witness Canada vs Russia). It has been great hockey so far, and I expect even more from the semifinals and finals. Because of Zdeno Chara's presence on the Slovakian team, I've been pulling for them to do well all along. This has exceeded my expectations for them. The fun part will be Patrice Bergeron trying to get around his Bruins teammate Chara.