Slovakia takes an important 4-2 win against USA

07 May 2012 | Mika Leino

USA's sloppy start of the game and Slovakia's superb one brought Slovakia a big win and made Helsinki group very interesting. And even better for Slovakia, their win today was totally deserved.

USA and Slovakia played maybe the best or at least the most entertaining game of Helsinki group so far. Pity that only less than four thousand people saw it at the Hartwall arena.

USA wasn't quite ready for the game during early stages. After two nice wins they maybe thought that also this game would go easily and without hard work. Wrong estimation and Dominik Granak started scoring for Slovakia already after 47 seconds into the first period after a very hazardous situation at USA goalmouth. Goalie Jimmy Howard didn't know where the puck was, neither did USA defenders, but Granak did: it was loose beside Howard's pad and Granak had easy job sweeping the puck into the net.

Slovaks had determined to fight today and USA defenders had really their hands full of work to do in order to keep up with fast skating Slovakian forwards. After 15 minutes Branko Radivojevic finished second goal for Slovakia with a hard wrist shot after a long rush all the way from own defensive zone. However USA got back into the game with a very lucky goal only 37 seconds later. Justin Faulks slapshot got deflected from Tomas Surovy and surprised Slovakia's goaltender Jan Laco who once again played very good game. Today came out also a rumour that Laco would go to a new KHL club Donbass Donetsk for next season. With this kind of play he certainly can choose his future club.

Games game winning goal came already in the first period. USA was already waiting for the buzzer but Slovakia wasn't. Andrej Sekera scored with only six seconds left of the period and that must have been mentally a really bad thing for USA. Worst of all the puck went with a deflection of Bobby Ryan and Paul Stastny."

"Our first period was catastrophic. We made a lot of turnovers and weren't ready for the game." comment Max Pacioretty after the game.

In the third period everybody waited for a furious team USA. They really tried and came on pretty strong but Slovakia was good today. They played patient and kept their lines compact. In the end Miroslav Satan sealed the victory with an empty netter.

Slovakias captain Zdeno Chara was relieved after the game: "Finally we got a win. We were already close to it against Canada and Finland but now we got it. This will do good to our self confidence."

Slovakia have now played against the most difficult teams in their group (Canada, Finland and USA). Now they just have to keep calm, play their own game and get the best possible result also against Kazakhstan, Belarus, Switzerland and France. What an interesting final days it will be in Helsinki group.