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While in Slovakia the 2021 positives will prevail in the evaluation of the World Hockey Championships, in the Czech Republic it will be exactly the opposite. They believed that after nine years they could win the medal again, but they ended up in the quarterfinals.
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They started the championship terribly, after three duels they had only two points on their account. Gradually, however, they improved and with thirteen points rose to third place in the group. In the first round of the playoffs, they came across Finland. For an opponent against whom they play several times a year in preparatory matches. A balanced duel was expected and it came true.
Finland won and advanced, but only one goal decided everything. Jere Innala secured the victory 1-0 with an accurate hit in the second period.
“We knew that the Finns were playing an extremely sophisticated mid-range system. We were preparing for it. Well, we lost too many pucks there, we were supposed to get them into the offensive zone.
We didn’t find enough audacity and courage to puck so that we could ask for a power play or surprise our opponent, which we obviously failed to do, “ evaluated the last match of his team in the tournament coach Filip Pešán. There were only two eliminations in the whole match, one player on each side.
The Czech Republic collects a single and decisive goal.
Source: IIHF
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With what tactics did they go to the quarterfinal duel and where does Pešán see the reason that they failed to overcome the opponent’s goalkeeper?
“We wanted to get the pucks into the attack zone and be the first. Especially from the beginning, the Finns were nervous, they fired at them. We could not put their defenders under enough pressure to make a mistake. We arrived late and lost pucks on the blue line. Unfortunately, that’s why they won. “
Throughout the tournament, the head coach mixed the line-up, looking for the right line-up. He didn’t have time to find him. He also mixed the line-up before the last match. He also responded to the question of whether the playfulness of individual attackers could not be missing. “It simply came to our notice then. It’s about putting on and skating. I don’t think the gameplay played any role. ”
The majority of the Czech hockey public will also consider dropping out in the quarterfinals a great failure. This is also due to the mood before the championship. The Czech Republic won all nine preparatory matches and several have already seen it on the podium. Filip Pešán admitted that there was a similar mood in the team and he had to tame it.
“It was more like a media massage, because we had good results, we showed a decent game and expectations were high. I myself slowed down the team’s mood before the tournament. It looked like we were only going for gold. As it turned out, that wasn’t true. ” commented on expectations before the tournament.
However, he himself longed for precious metal. That is why he considers the championship to be a failure. “I am disappointed. But I don’t take it as a loser. I take it as a failure because I wanted to play for medals, ” concluded his last press conference in Riga.
