The quarter finals are the past and the semis are next up. With all four quarter finals being played out on Wednesday in Vancouver at GM place (or for the Olympians, Canada Place) there were some surprising results and unexpected team progressing. The tournament thus far has shown the smaller nations are standing up more than ever to the bigger boys in the playground while there have been some memorable match ups thus far throughout the tourney. Wednesday night saw two of the biggest teams sent home from the Games earlier than anticipated.
The widely predicted final took place two rounds earlier than expected when home team and favourites Team Canada took on Russia. One of the favourites was going home and not medalling, a disaster for either team. Goals were a given in this one but its pretty safe to say no one expected Canada to come through 7-3. Ryan Getzlaf early in the first, Dan Boyle, Rick Nash, Brenden Morrow, Corey Perry (with two) and Shea Weber scored for the Canadians while Dmitri Kalinin, Maxim Afinogenov and Sergei Gonchar replied for Russia. On the end of this heavy defeat, Russia’s miserable and underwhelming tournament is at an end with no medal. There will be a lot of criticism in the Russian media so the Russian’s NHL based players will be thankful they haven’t got to fly back to Russia with the KHL contingent. The best player in the world Alexander Ovechkin has never hit full stride for the Russians in this tournament and was again pointless and -2 to cap a personally disappointing tournament for the NHL MVP.
Team USA. At no point in this tournament have they wowed viewers or intimidated opponents with their dominating play. They simply haven’t got the same depth as the Canadians, Russians or even the Swedes but what they do have is work rate, discipline to their system and character in abundance. USA patiently knocked off Switzerland 2-0 last night on the back of two Zach Parise goals (one an empty netter) and solid goaltending from Ryan Miller. Switzerland stayed in it late thanks to goalie Jonas Hiller and the seemingly oversized goal posts. With such determination through a complete 60 minutes USA cannot be underrated as they played a remarkably patient game controlled the puck well and didn’t panic when the puck didn’t go in for them despite a barrage of shots on Hiller. It was indeed ironic that when they got their first (the game winner) it was a freak bounce of the puck from a tip in by Parise. Either way, USA continued to play solid tournament hockey and will fancy a shot at gold from here on in.
The end of an Olympic era happened on Wednesday. Jaromir Jagr (and possibly many of the veteran heavy Czech team) surely played his last game as an Olympian as the Czech Republic lost 2-0 to Finland. Finland keeps getting told they don’t have enough talent or depth but yet again they’re one game away from the Olympic final. Valtteri Filppula and Nicklas Hagman scored for the Fins who much like USA rode strong goaltending to the finish with Miikka Kipprusoff making 31 saves. The semi final between the USA and Finland will be a war of attrition and a classic case of who can last the longest. With arguably the hottest two goalies in the tournament goals may be a premium between the Fins and the Americans.
The biggest upset of the night (unless you count the surprising amount of goals Canada scored) was Slovakia’s 4-3 victory over defending champions Sweden meaning there will be a new champion in Vancouver. Previously unbeaten and statistically perfect goaltender Henrik Lundqvist was beaten 4 times off only 14 shots as Slovakia proved it’s not quantity but quality in terms of shots. Lundqvist’s team mate and star sniper Marian Gaborik opened the scoring off a Marian Hossa feed while Andrej Sekera, Tomas Kopecky and Pavol Demitra also scored for the upstart Slovakians. Sweden did tie it at 2 for a while but could never get ahead in the game despite doubling Slovakia’s shot total with 29. Henrik Zetterberg, Patrick Hornqvist and Daniel Alfredsson scored for Sweden. Slovakia are a dangerous opponent and while they don’t possess the depth of the top 3 nations or even USA they do possess some top end talent with Gaborik, Marian Hossa, Lubomir Visnovsky and Zdeno Chara, players enjoying Indian summers such as Pavol Demitra and (incredibly important in this format) hot goal tending in Jaroslav Halak. Halak was already proving this year in the NHL he can be a go-to goalie and he’s emphasised that in the Olympics. Despite all this, Canada will be delighted to face the Slovaks and not the normally defensively thorough Swedes but they will be wary not to underestimate the Slovaks who are enjoying their best ever Olympics. The semi finals play out on Friday and the whole of America and especially Canada will be watching.
My main sports interests are ice hockey and American football as well as 'soccer' (football?!).