BALTIMORE, Maryland February 19, 2014 - The Russian Federation hockey team will not medal at the Sochi Olympic Games. That is the reality coming out of the team's defeat this morning at the hands of a determined and surgically powerful Finland Team. The Fins and their outstanding Goal Keeper, Tuukka Rask, kept the Russians frustrated throughout the game after the host team received a first period goal from Ilya Kovalchuk on a power play. The lead didn't last two minutes. Kovalchuk scored with 12:09 left in the first period, assisted by Pavel Datsyuk. But 1:27 later, Juhamatti Aaltonen grabbed the puck in the corner of the Russian end and worked around and quickly past a flat-footed Russian defenseman, Nikita Nikitin, then veered to his right to within three or four feet of the goal, although barely in front of the goal line. He fired a shot at such a hard angle that one could not imagine it going in. But Russian Goal Keeper Semyon Varlamov, who was awarded the start over Sergei Bobrovsky (who had been in goal for the USA game), had somehow left the near post open and the puck dribbled past him and into the net. The packed arena, in loud ecstasy after the Kovalchuk score, turned deathly silent.
The morbid mood would only grow. Still in the first period the Fins put together a gorgeous play that resulted in the go-ahead goal. With about two and one-half minutes remaining in the period Mikael Granlund picked up the pick at center ice and sped toward the net. He was met, naturally, by the Russian defense. At the last, he flipped the puck to his right where the aging, but still nimble and fast Teemu Selanne, 43, took it in stride and fired it past an awestruck Varlamov. The final score of the game came with 14:23 left in the second period while the Fins were on a power play. The Fins' power play is a sight to behold; they spread the ice to magnify their man advantage and quickly rifle passes around a scrambling Russian defense. When the lane presents itself they finally flip the puck into the heart of the defense to a waiting forward, or they wind up and fire a missle from a point while screening the goalie. On this score Granlund was in front of the goal and pounced on a loose puck. His quick flip again beat Varlamov, who soon thereafter headed for the bench in favor of Bobrovsky. It was already way too late for the Russians.
For the game the Russians out-shot the Fins, 38-22, but too many of those shots came from the point without any screener in sight. To many observers the Russians seemed a tad slow, which might well be explained by the fact that they played - and beat - a competent and determined Norwegian team only 24 hours earlier. The Fins had received a bye because of their success in the preliminary round.
Many highly placed Russians had decreed that obtaining a medal in men's hockey was the most important objective of the games for the host country. The Russians have failed to gain an Olympic medal in ice hockey since the 1980 Lake Placid Games. Americans will recall that it was in those games, contested at the height of the Cold War, that the USA stunned the Soviets and won a gold medal, thereby forever changing the hockey fortunes of the two countries. The Soviets did earn a Silver Medal in the games, but it ended a long run of gold medals in men's hockey, broken only by the stunning gold medal win of the United States in the Squaw Valley Olympics of 1960. The hockey rink at those games was only partly indoors.
Today's win puts Finland into the semi-finals against Sweden, a 5-0 winner over upstart Slovenia in the day's first game. Although the final score of that game indicates a decisive win for the Swedes, in fact the score entering the final period was only 1-0. While teams such as Sweden, Finland, Canada, the USA and Russia are loaded up with NHL players, the small country of Slovenia has but one NHL player, Anze kopitar, the high-scoring center and forward for the Los Angeles Kings. In the Olympics, Kopitar has played quite a bit of defense, a ruse designed to increase his ice time for the experienced-strapped Slovenians.
In games started near noon on Wednesday, the United States beat back the Czech Republic, 5-2, behind the sensational goal-keeping of Jonathan Quick and a balanced and swarming offense. Canada won the other quarter-final with a tense 2-1 win over upset-minded Latvia. The Latvian Goal-Keeper, Kristers Gudlevskis, only 21-years-old, kept the hard-charging Canadians at bay until the final minutes of the game. Then, a controversial penalty called against Latvia put Team Canada on the power-play, and Shea Weber, a veteran defenseman for the Nashville Predators of the NHL, blasted home a goal from the point while Gudlevskis was heavily screened by Canadian Players swarming the goal. Even in defeat, the Latvian team crowded around Gudlevskis after the game, ensuring that he understood how proud they were of him.
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