Stacked Swedes coast past Czechs
Here are the early returns from the Olympic men’s hockey tournament. If you thought the Swedes had one of the strongest teams in the field, congratulations, you’re right.
If you thought the Czechs sent a substandard team to Russia, congratulations, you’re right.
And if you thought watching Latvia and Switzerland would be like watching paint dry, congratulations, you were really right.
“I think we have good chemistry,” said defenceman Johnny Oduya shortly after the Swedes dispatched the Czechs 4-2 on Wednesday night. “Swedes are, how you say, we like to play for each other and make sure the team game comes first. Obviously it wasn’t perfect today but we got a win against a good team.”
And really, that characterization was as nice and neat as the Swedish win.
Wednesday night, the men’s hockey competition started with a marquee matchup that turned out to be a dud and a dud matchup that lived up to its advanced billing.
At the gleaming Bolshoy Ice Dome, the Swedes scored four goals on their first 11 shots before coasting to a 4-2 win over an uninspired Czech side. And across the street at the smaller Shayba Arena, Switzerland beat Latvia 1-0 in a snoozer of a game that didn’t produce a goal until 59 minutes and 52.1 seconds had been played.
In the headliner in front of a raucous, largely pro-Czech crowd, the skilled, savvy Swedes scored three goals against Czech starter Jakub Kovar, the Philadelphia Flyers draft pick who plays in the KHL, then scored on their first shot against Kovar’s replacement, Alexander Salak, another KHL ’keeper.
If you were wondering about the whereabouts of Ondrej Pavelec, the Czech’s real goalie, he’s been saved for Friday’s game against the highflying Latvians.
Salak actually calmed things down after he took over from Kovar in the first minute of the second period but, by then, the damage had been done. Erik Karlsson opened the scoring midway through the first, then closed it on the power play early in the second.
The Czechs, for their part, were congratulating themselves for making a game of it in the second period but the Swedes, with Henrik Lundqvist in goal, never looked uncomfortable.