The end of two tremendous series in Czech Extraliga
The victory series of the first Třinec and the long set of defeats of Slavia. After the last weekend, they are both over. Olomouc and Liberec are the teams which experienced the taste of loss from Slavia as the first ones. And Pardubice, which beated Třinec, then absolutely lost all its luck in the next game against Mladá Boleslav.
The record streak stopped on number thirteen
This season’s roster of Třinec is so special, that the team could possibly think about winning the Stanley Cup. The Steelers have been dominating the whole Extraliga so much that they built up a series of thirteen consecutive victories. They beated down all its opponents, one after another.
When you win 13 games in a row, even a loss is much easier to accept. The final stop of Třinec’s hot streak came in Pardubice on Friday. The home team defeated Oceláři 2-0 and except of cutting their series, for the Steelers this was the first time in the whole regular season to not score even once.
The real leader does not descend after a single loss. Třinec perfectly demonstrated validity of the saying on Sunday in Olomouc. The Steelers took there a veni-vidi-vici victory after building up a comfortable four goals lead. Though Olomouc scored twice during last 6 minutes, it was too late for starting a thriller.
Another series was broken after twenty rounds
Even on a longer streak were hockeyists of Slavia. Needless to say, this was much sadder series to keep. Between November 16, 2014 and January 23, 2015, the oldest Czech hockey club did not took a three-points victory in 20 consecutive games.
All the bad things come to an end. In front of the second highest season’s attendance, which was caused by a special offer of a ticket for less than 1€, the Red-Whites ran over Olomouc 5-1. What for more, it was not a shout in the dark, two days later Slavia stealed three points away in Liberec.
Still being the last, Slavia actually losses fifteen points for the playoffs spots. Is there any chance remaining? “I don’t want to be the negative one, but we need to stay reailistic. We’d better concentrate for playouts, I guess,” said the hero of the night in Liberec, Dominik Furch, a goalie who made 48 saves to help Slavia win 1-3.
Bad luck of Pardubice: Four shots to the construction and an own goal!
Like Pardubice were cursed after the victory over sovereign Třinec, they lost the next home game against Mladá Boleslav due to very bad luck only. Just 48 hours after the heroic win, all the luck was suddenly gone.
The Boleslav Skaters won 2-3, because four times when their netminder Martin Růžička was overcomed already, instead of bogging into the net, the puck chose to rebound away off the construction. Four times!
What’s more, one of the three away team’s goals was scored by Pardubice goalie Robert Kristan which makes it the real game-winning goal. Like they were speaking different languages, the combination of two Slovenian players in uniforms of Pardubice resulted in a goal in their own net. Kristan passed the puck to defender Blaž Gregorec, but pitched his skate only which made the puck rebounded to the net directly.
Results of 40th and 41th round