Slovenia opens with an upset over Canada
A natural hattrick by Matic Kralj in less than five minutes put the Slovenians in the driver´s seat, and they never looked back. The two teams took some time feeling each other out, with neither side attacking too hard at the start. Canada finally scored a pair in the last minute of the first quarter, before Kralj´s offensive explosion early in the second. From there, solid goaltending from Gesper Kroselj kept the Slovenes in front, and they escaped with a 6-4 victory to open the tournament.
| Game no. 2 • aA1 • Sun 19/6/2011 • 14:00 • Schedule and results | ||
|---|---|---|
Canada |
4:6 |  Slovenia |
| (2:0, 0:4, 2:1, 0:1) | ||
| Leggat (MacPherson) - French, Eng, Carter, Henderson, Hutchinson - Hammond, Ross, Woods, Grassi, Foote, Nowakowski. | Kroselj (Skrabelj) - Slivnik, Loboda, Vedlin, Erman, Berlisk - Kralj, Remar, Zemva, Ograjensek, Kuralt. | |
| Goals and assists: 12. Hammond (Ross, French), 12. Woods (Carter), 26. Ross (Hammond), 30. Hammond - 13. Kralj (Remar), 17. Kralj (Zemva), 18. Kralj (Remar), 22. Vedlin (Ograjensek, Remar), 31. Kralj (Vedlin), 39. Remar. | ||
| Shots: 31:26
(9:7, 5:10, 5:4, 12:5).
Penalties: 4:2.
PP goals: 0:1.
SH goals: 0:0. Refferees: Dreger (USA), Jakubec (SVK). Audience: 100. |
||
 Live coverage on onlajny.cz | ||
Game report
Slovenia opened the 2011 World Championship by beating a team they had never beaten before, and came from two goals down to do so. Canada, on the other hand, dropped a game they could ill afford if they hope to advance past the group stage.
The two teams spent most of the first quarter feeling each other out, and neither took many daring offensive chances. Finally, in the last minute of the opening quarter, it was Canada who struck first, and they scored twice.
First, David Hammond scored his first of 2 on the day by collecting his own rebound and lifting it over a fallen Gasper Kroselj, and then Thomas Woods converted a pass from Jimmy Carter to make it 2-0.
However, just before the end of the quarter, Canada´s Kyle Henderson was sent off for hooking, and his penalty carried over into the second. That´s when Matic Kralj went to work. He cut the lead in half with a shot from the point on the power-play. He then tied the score four minutes later, and completed his natural hat trick in 4:39 by finishing a two-on-one with Ales Remar to put Slovenia in the lead.
Canada had a chance to tie the score on the power-play and moved the puck around well in the Slovenian end, but were unable to generate any really good scoring chances. Late in the half, Domen Vedlin finished off a pretty passing play to score Slovenia´s fourth goal of the quarter, and they went to the break with a 4-2 lead.
Of course, Canada didn´t just fold their tent, but they came out strong after the break and got goals from Adam Ross and Hammond to tie the score. The celebration was short-lived, though, as Kralj notched his fourth of the game on a delayed penalty to put Slovenia back in the lead for good.
"This year we have a lot of newcomers on the team and they had professional hockey players, against whom we showed too much respect," was how David Hammond, who led Canada with 2 goals and an assist, summed things up. It´s not like Canada didn´t get their chances, though. They had a chance on a fourth-quarter power-play, but when Ales Remar stepped out of the box, he picked up a loose puck and went in alone on Brett Leggat to score the game´s final goal. The Canadians fired 31 shots at Gasper Kroselj, but the Slovenian keeper made many nice saves among the 27 he stopped, including a late one off a backhander in close from Ross to put an exclamation point on the victory.
Things won´t get any easier for Canada now, as they face Slovakia on Monday and the USA on Tuesday. Slovenia faces the same two teams, but Sunday´s win got them off to the right start.
Author: Derek OBrien
Game reactions
Jason Stephens (head coach of Canada):Most of the game we did´t play that bad, but we´re much better than that. The players didn´t stick to what was agreed in practice and were too individualistic. In the evening, we´ll look at the video and make some changes for tomorrow.
Rok Rojsek (head coach of Slovenia): It was really hard match. We´ve never beaten Canada before. We played our game tactically pretty well. I think we played good defensively. We were very good at scoring goals today. We are very happy with that. We got two goals against us to start and that was pretty bad. We´ve got three players down and Canada had a lot of chances to score goals two on one. The last twelve minutes we stayed back with two guys and that´s the thing. We played good on defense and we had good chances to score goals. We didn´t prepare for this tournament too much. We played a couple tournaments back home and the last ten days we played five matches and had three practices and that´s all.
