Varlamov shuts out Slovakia
Eurolanche brings you the daily recap of everything important that happend at the Olympics in Russia involving Avalanche players.The Olympics continued with 4 games today, three of them involving Avalanche players. Semyon Varlamov got the nod in net for Team Russia, while Paul Stastny and Matt Duchene played for Team USA and Canada.
Russia played it’s final game of the group stage against Slovakia and wanted to end the preliminaries with a win. Slovakia wasn’t ready to surrender points without a fight and were even outshooting the host nation through two periods. The Russians came out flying in the third period, applying great pressure and getting a lot of good chances to get the game winner. Although Russia had 3 powerplay opportunities in the later stages of the game, they were repeatedly stopped by Slovak goalie Ján Laco. Both goalies were driving their opponents mad by stopping everything they threw at them and the game had to be decided in the shootout, where the hosts were lifted by the game-winning goal courtesy of Ilya Kovalchuk.
Varlamov had to be sharp throughout the whole game as opposed to his first start against Slovenia. The Avs netminder made 27 saves as he got his first shutout of the tourney. He stopped both Michal Handzuš and Tomáš Tatar in the shootout and showed that he’s more than capable of being the starting goalie for the hosts.
Russia – Slovakia 1:0 SO (0:0, 0:0, 0:0, 0:0, 1:0)
Team USA played their last match of the group stages against Slovenia and wanted to make sure they would advance directly to the quarterfinals. Their march to victory was led by hattrick-hero Phil Kessel as the USA only lost a single point in the group stage and won against the Slovenes 5-1, with Ryan Miller losing the shutout with just 17.6 seconds left to play.
Paul Stastny was held without a point and only had an ice-time of 12:19. He played several shifts on the PK and had 5 shots on goal along with a 6 face-off wins (of a total of 12 faceoffs).
Slovenia – USA 1:5 (0:2, 0:2, 1:1)
Today’s final game was a showdown between Finland and Canada, as the Canadians were led to victory by Drew Doughty and his two-goal night. The Kings defender opened the score and had the overtime game winner with 3 minutes left in extra-time.
Matt Duchene played a total of 13 minutes and 12 seconds and won both his faceoffs, but was held without a shot. Duchene played on a line with Anaheim forwards Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf.
Finland – Canada 1:2 OT (0:1, 1:0, 0:0, 0:1)
Austria – Norway 3:1 (2:0, 0:1, 1:0)
No games are scheduled for tomorrow, as every team will get a day off before the start of the knockout stage on Tuesday.
Source of photos: Twitter
Michal Hezely, Slovakia, hezely@eurolanche.com
16/02/2014 - 22:00
