The duel was interrupted for a long 70 minutes. The removal of the damaged ice rink at the ice stadium in Espoo, where the team from the second highest Finnish league, Kiekko-Espoo, is based, left a large groove in the ice.
The ice skate disappeared from the playing field after only a quarter of an hour, but the organizers did not manage to return the ice to a usable form. After an endless break, the organizers decided that the match would be played in the training hall, where they moved at least one camera on which the broadcast was filmed.
At the end of the second period, the Slovaks led unexpectedly high 8:1, in the end they inflicted an 11:1 debacle on Norway, when forward Tomáš Poběžal scored four goals. At the same time, in the previous three matches, our eastern neighbors, who reached the semi-finals of last year’s championship and finished fourth, did not shine at all.
Rather the opposite. At the beginning of the lesson 0:9 against the USA, then a 3:5 defeat against Latvia and a 0:4 loss against Finland, while Slovakia recorded only eight shots on goal in the match, not even one in the third period.
Nevertheless, coach Martin Dendis praised the players after each duel. “Finland gave us four goals in the first period and it was not easy to get back together, I have to praise the team for that. For forty minutes we then played 0:0 with the opponent, we showed a dedicated team performance,” the coach described for the association’s website.
Only in the final match of the group did the Slovaks win. They needed to win by at least two goals to avoid relegation battles. They succeeded with a margin and in Thursday’s quarter-finals they will face the Czech team from 1:45 p.m. This was helped by the loss of the Swedes, who defeated Switzerland 3:2 only after extra time.
Tags: Slovak upsurge shadow bizarre conclusion match played training hall
