Denmark opens in style

07 Feb 2013 | Henrik Lundqvist

The Danish women surprised the host Slovakia with a 2-1 win in the Women's Final Olympic Qualification in Poprad. Denmark, Czech Republic and Germany also won their first game.

Denmark had played the Olympic Preliminary Qualification in October and the Olympic Pre-Qualification in November to reach this final battle for the spots in Sochi. Denmark is the only team that had to play all both previous stages to come here and is lowest ranked (19th on the IIHF ranking) of the eight remaining countries. Slovakia is ranked as #7 and plays on home soil but that didn't help today. The home team took the lead after only 53 seconds of play on a goal by Janka Culikova, but then the Danish goalie Kamilla Lund Nielsen refused to allow another goal. Josefine Persson and Charlotte Densing scored for Denmark in the first period. The game ended 1-2 and was a well deserved Danish win. They outshot theit opponent 39-21.

In the same group Norway seemed to have an easy route towards three points having a 3-0 lead after half the game. But their Japanese opponent never stopped trying and managed to turn the game to a 4-3 victory. Tomoko Sakagami scored the winner at 57:13.

The other group is played in Weiden, Germany. Before a half period was played Czech Republic already had a 3-0 lead against Kazakhstan. The game ended with an easy 5-1 win.

Germany is the favourite of the group and won the opener 3-1 against China. Julia Zorn scored twice.