Czechia opens Olympic qualifying round looking to ‘show the world’ it belongs
The Czechs also feel they improved in each game.
Canada rolled against them. That much was obvious. That game was never in doubt from the Canadian side.
France gave Czechia a big scare, scoring three goals in the first 5:54 of the second period to lead 3-2. Czechia came back and carried a 4-3 lead into the second intermission before making it 6-3 less than two minutes into the third.
The game against Switzerland was the Czechs’ best of the preliminary round. Back and forth all the way through, Martin Necas scored to tie it 3-3 at 17:54 of the third before Dean Kukan won it for the Swiss 1:49 into overtime.
“What we said before (the tournament) is we should progress every game, we should be better and better and better, and that’s how I feel we’ve been doing,” goalie Lukas Dostal said. “Obviously, Switzerland, you cannot sleep on them. They have a good team. They play a hard system. It’s always very close games against them. I had a chance to watch their game against Canada, and obviously in the end Canada outscored them, but I don’t think they played a bad game. They defended well, and it was the same thing against us. It was a tough game, but, obviously, it’s in the past now and we’re just focusing on Denmark.”
Denmark will be a challenge.
The Danes felt they were better against Team Germany in their first game, owning a 38-26 advantage in shots on goal in a 3-1 loss. They put a big scare into Team USA before losing 6-3, and they won 4-2 against Team Latvia, which defeated Germany 4-3.
“Well, they’re a big, defensive, very physical team,” Gudas said.
