At the game between Finnland and Slovakia the negative series of the Slovaks continued. The Finns had the game under control at each time and finally won deservedly by 5:2.
After the Germans presented an extremely good game against the Russians directly the next day the next opponent was waiting. Belarus first was superior and quickly scored the 1:0 lead. But the German national team fought back, although the fatigue related to the exhausting game the day before was obvious and finally scored the leveler in the third period. Unfortunately in the following overtime Belarus scored the final result 2:1.
In a very one-sided game the Russians did not need much effort during this qualification round match. So in the end it was a deserved 1:6 for the Russians.
In a weak game the USA could easily win by 4:0 against the French and continued their damage limitation in the relegation round.
When first hearing about Germany facing Russia beforehand everybody thought of Germany hopefully not loosing too high because a defeat was clearly expected. But the German national team was very activly opposing and nearly across the whole game on the same level with the Russians, demanding everything from them. At least the Russians were able to win but with the result 3:2 it was very tight and until the last second they had to fear the leveler scored by the Germans.
The Americans had to go into relegation round and were willing to limit the damage because not reaching the qualification round was seen with disgust overseas. The performance of the US boys was not very good in this game but against the continously striking bad playing Kazakhs it was sufficient to win. But this victory was inadequately high with 10:0 and was not reflecting the real course of the game where the Kazakhs were in an overall poor game keeping quite good pace with the Americans.
The game Finnland versus Belarus in the qualification round ended by 2:0. In a lively game where the Finns presented themselves as stronger team two goals during the second period were sufficient to bring in the victory whilst running down the clock.
Only after a few secondes the Danes took the lead and afterwards the goals were scored minute by minute. This led to a very early exchange of the Slovaks goalie which led to nothing. Both goalies each got three goals during the first period and so the Danes went with a 6:0 into the break.
Unfortunately also in their last game there was no real rebellion of the Kazakhs anymore so that it was an easy game for the Slovaks to decide the match by 1:5 for them. This meant qualification round for the Slovaks and relegation round for the Kazakhs.
Also in the last preround game the Russians were not really challenged on so more or less playing at overdrive got to a 3:1 victory against their neighbours from Belarus. By that both teams continued at the qualification round.
© 2024 Sancta Terra