Ice hockey mad Slovakia asks - what went wrong?

Central Europe is made about Ice Hockey and with the world ice-hockey championship in Moscow reaching the play-off phase teams are preparing for the most important game of the tournament. Slovakia has been among the favourites for medal positions, however the quarterfinal reality proved that team spirit is more important than big stars.

Photo: CTK

The quarterfinal match against the Olympic and World ice-hockey champions Sweden, buried Slovak hopes for a medal. The Slovak team lost in a wild contest to the Swedish team 7:4. Our captain Miroslav Satan believes that the Slovak national team has a problem with the psychology of the players.

"If we want to succeed in the future on the world champs or Olympics, we have to play the whole 60 minutes like we played in the first period against Sweden. We can play a good hockey, but somehow, it looks like we have the problem with the concentration on the match. Our performances are fluctuating and this is a difference between us and other elite teams. We can play an excellent hockey but at the same time, we play a really bad hockey. Especially when it comes to the defense. So I think this is something we definitely have to work out in the future."

Photo: CTK

Slovakia started off very well acquiring a quick lead in the third minute by Atlanta Thrashers forward Marian Hossa who scored a goal in the first power play of the match. Sweden equalized but we have managed to grab a lead again when Richard Kapus scored after a quick breakaway. The first period of the match really belonged to Slovakia. But the things were going to change rapidly in the second period. Richard Kapus - a veteran in Slovak National thinks that it was the second period that has decided the match.

"We really screwed up the second period. We have fallen back to defense and then gather mistake after mistake. Swedish has scored goals exactly from the situations we were analyzing before the match, situations which we knew we simply had to avoid. That was the deciding factor of the match. We were good enough to win the match, but you can't win while letting in six goals from the opponent like Sweden."

Photo: CTK

Saying that the tournament system is cruel, is not far from reality. The quarterfinal match decides whether the team plays for medals or not, its simply the match of success and failure. There are always voices to change the format of the tournament so the success of the team is not dependent only on one match. But the rules are the same for everyone and it is not an excuse for us. According to head coach Supler, the players are under the greatest pressure in the quarterfinal match.

Photo: CTK

"I think that the quarterfinal match is even much harder than the playoff matches in the NHL, because one game decides it all. Many players are not under such pressure because they have seven games to show their skills, one game means basically nothing for the whole series. Some of our players simply did not handle the pressure. We have to clearly admit that some parts of the match were absolutely messed up."

Slovakia hasn't managed to go through the quarterfinals for the third time in a row. Fans are obviously disappointed because the expectations were set high. Maybe too high, considering the fact that the Slovak team had one elite NHL line which was one of the best at the tournament, but the rest of the team simply could not match them. The Swedes did not have such an offensive starts in the team. But they were able to come up huge as a team and that was the decisive feature of their victory. We can only hope that the team chemistry of the Slovak team will work better in the future.