Your heart just has to go out to the Swiss in their last match in Group E of the qualification round. They needed all three points in their match against a USA team that had already qualified to the quarterfinals. All credit to the USA; despite already being qualified, they gave away nothing to the Swiss. The Swiss finally won the game 4-3 but the game winning goal came 13 seconds (!) the wrong side of regular time, allowing Latvia to go through instead. "A heartbreaking win," said Swiss captain Mark Streit.
A game and a half into the quarterfinals and I would have said Group F qualifiers Canada, Finland, Czech Republic and Belarus were way out in front of the qualifiers from Group E. After all, Belarus, fourth seeds, had almost held first seeds in Group E, Russia, in regular time and Finland, second seeds, were far superior to the USA in their quarterfinal. But by the end of the Finland-USA match, the tables had turned and the Americans came out 3-2 winners after what turned out to be an even match. This afternoon, Canada did just enough to keep a two goal advantage over Latvia up to the final whistle. The fourth and last quarterfinal saw a confident and secure Swedish team suddenly all but lose it in the third period when the Czechs scored when they were two men down to reduce the two goal advantage the Swedes had. The Czechs continued to press the Swedish goal but a blue line shot from Jönsson took most of the pressure off and after the goal the Czechs didn't really have a realistic chance.
In the NHL play-offs, Washington was the only team to make the most of home ice and took a 2 match lead into their matches in Pittsburgh. The second game in Washington was remarkable in that the Titan in each team, Ovechkin in Washington and Crosby in Pittsburgh, came away from the match with a hat trick each. Pittsburgh did what they had to do in their first match on home ice and won in overtime to reduce the arrears. So all the ties now stand at 2-1 ahead of tonight's matches Chicago(1)-Vancouver(2) and Anaheim (2)-Detroit(1).
It's a busy time just now with the World Championships and NHL play-offs so expect a new piece from me soon!
All the best.
