Germany collapses again

15 May 2012 | Fredrik Pålsson

4-12 against Norway was followed by an even worse performance and a 1-8 loss to a quick Czech side.

A couple of years ago they played in the semi final, but what has happened to this German team now? Despite a win against poor Italy they only managed to beat Denmark with a lot of luck and finished the Championship with conceding 20 goals in the last two games.

"They were too strong for us. The Czechs played with high speed and we had problems in our defence", Germany's head coach Jakob Kölliker said after the game and added "It was hard to come back with confidence from the last game". But he didn't agree that the system he used was wrong "You can use any system you want when it's decided in two games like these".

Czechs cruised to a 3-1 lead after the first period against Germany. Ales Hemsky opened the score early. Tomas Greilinger tied the game on power play but the game was only tied for a few minutes before Lukas Krajicek made it 2-1 nicely assisted by Michal Vondrka who found Krajicek at the far post. Later the Czechs were a bit lucky to make it 3-1 when a pass from Martin Erat was deflected by Nicolai Goc into his own net.

After 3-1 in the first period the Czechs was in full control of the game added a nice 4-1 goal when Krajicek found Koukal with a a shot pass on the power play. The Germans didn't look much better than in the 4-12 loss to Norway and David Krejci easily made it 5-1 when he was given a breakaway while playing shorthanded. 6-1 was scored by Jiri Novotny from short range.

In the third period the German collapse continued, Petr Koukal made another easy for 7-1 at the power play. Blatak made it 8-1 on a another power play before the Czechs lost focus and failed to scored on both a five on three power play and a penalty shot (Krejci), the Czechs also changed their goalie deciding to give Mrazek some ice team.

Despite conceding eight goals today Dennis Endras tried to be happy after the game but when trying to analyse what went wrong he said "When we make one mistake it's panic, we need to be more stable as a team. We have had some good and bad games. We had our goals but we now we are going home". And on his own performance, he just said with a smile "I'm always satisfied".

After a slow start to the tournament the Czechs seem stronger and stronger and will now play hosts Sweden in the quarter final on Thursday. Petr Tenkrat agreed that his team has been better and better and said about the quarter final "It's gonna be a huge game". Tomas Plekanec said "They're playing at home so they're favourites".