Double away wins for Vítkovice

Although Vítkovice finished the regular season on a better place in the final standings and the Ostravian team came into the semi finals series against HC EATON as the seeded one, a lot of experts was favoring Pardubice because of its famous streak of 16 playoffs-wins in a row and because of really impressing results from the mutual games.

But Pardubice totally failed in the first game on their home ground and because of the individual fault in the overtime of the second one, its player had lost also the second.

Game 2 (Wed, Mar 23):

Pardubice – Vítkovice 0:3 (0:0, 0:3, 0:0)

A really uninspired performance of Pardubice’s players in combination with the great play of Vítkovice in the second period brought the second shutout in the series and the fourth in this year’s playoffs for the Vítkovice goalie Roman Málek and the victory number 2 for the away team.

The biggest difference between the teams was in shooting. The Vítkovice players had shots on target 19 times during the first 40 minutes of  play and scored three-times. Roman Málek had to challenge 34 shots during the whole game but none of them fell into his net. Also from the reason that Pardubice’s shots were aiming into the lower half of the net, where Málek is unbeatable.

Game 3 (Thu, Mar 24):

Pardubice – Vítkovice 2:3 OT (0:0, 2:1, 0:1 – 0:1)

The second game in Pardubice proceeded in the eminently different atmosphere. Pardubice figured out that more shots to the higher half of Málek’s net is needed as well as pressure on the net.

Its players weren’t able to use any of the quite high count of power plays in the first period, but early in the second they opened the score. But a quick answer came from Bartoň’s stick – Bartoň scored his very first point in the Extraliga season.

After just three minutes a big euphoria came in Pardubice’s ČEZ Arena, because of Jan Starý’s shorthanded goal and the joy of the home team’s fans was holding out until the 58^th minute when Petr Vrána brought down a shot from the blue line and the game had to go into overtime.

The overtime started with a Pardubice power play, but HC EATON wasn’t able to use it. Four minutes after the end of Vítkovice’s penalty killing Mezei was starting an offensive action of his team behind his net, but he fell and lost the puck that came to Pohl’s stick. Petr Pohl found the center of his third line, Vrána, who scored his second goal in the game and ended it with a Vítkovice victory.

Sunday’s game no.4 could be the last one in the series and Vítkovice could become the first finalist.

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