Russian victory over the Czechs to finish second

The game between Russia and Czech Republic was a sleepy contest filled with penalties and bad power plays. However Russia was least bad team and won the game quite easily 4-2. The result means that Russia finish second in the tournament while the Czechs finnish in last place. Russia dominated the first period outshooting the Czech Republic 16-6 but the period ended 1-1 after a power play goal by Ondrej Nemec for the Czechs and an equalizer by Maksim Rybin. After a terribly bad second period without many scoring chances Maksim Rybin broke the deadlock at 18:26 when he found the net high from a bad angle, Stepanek had no chance to close the gap at the second post.

Five minutes into the third period Russia took advantage of one many power plays and made it 3-1 by Galimov. A minute later Evgeny Kuznetsov added the fourth goal with a nice wrist shot. After the two quick goals the game lost in quality again but Russia was in full control of the game. 56 minutes into the game the Czechs finally showed some quality when Tomas Rolinek finished a good power play for 4-2. The Czechs got a final chance to come back with a 5 on 3 power play but Biryukov made a good save to keep his team in a two goal lead.


One of few Czech celebrations

Best player of the game award in the Czech Republic was given Jakub Stepanek, his second of the tournament after conceding ten goals in two games, that speaks a lot about the Czech performance in LG Hockey Ganmes. This was the Czechs seventh loss in nine games in this year's Euro Hockey Tour and there are voices raised that says that the Czech head coach Alois Hadamczik should be fired from his position.

"Too bad our defencemen didn’t support attack properly. We missed a lot of our elite defencemen like Lukas Krajicek. I’m pleased with our goalies though. Roman Cervenka played fine, he was one of the best attackers here. Martin Adamsky was the best rookie in our team. But we can’t be happy with our overall performance here. Unfortunately, we didn‘t pick the right players to make a good team. Hopefully we’ll make a better selection next time" Hadamczik said commenting on his teams effort in this tournament.


Kaspar and Rybin

For Russia the double goal scorer Maksim Rybin was given the best player award. "Yesterday we heavily lost the first period and that put us down. Today the Czechs scored the first goal, but we managed to tie the game. That was a very important moment. After that we were not nervous anymore and we also had much more luck than against the Swedes. I felt very well today. I am happy that I scored two goals", Rybin said after the game.

0-1 (6:00) Ondrej Nemec PP
1-1 (7:02) Maksim Rybin (Denis Parshin, Aleksei Emelin)
2-1 (38:26) Maksim Rybin (Denis Parshin)
3-1 (45:06) Aleksandr Galimov (Gennady Churilov) PP
4-1 (46:28) Evgeny Kuznetsov (Vadim Sipachev)
4-2 (55:51) Tomas Rolinek (Jan Marek, Lukas Zib) PP

 

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