USA Hockey Rallies For Comeback Win Against Denmark

So Mitch, we were waiting as we were recording for the end for the final score of the US men's hockey game versus Denmark.

I can tell you that it's just gone final right now.

6 to 3 US, it was hairy there for a little bit, um, but they pulled it out.

The US had another really lousy first period, um, and before turning it on in the second, just like we saw against Latvia the other day, um, and you gotta feel a little nervous about this US men's team right now.

The women are, are flying with the men are like, I don't know, there's something about it, um, they're really not playing their best.

The main difference here, I think, and I think one thing that they can hopefully just throw out that first period as being a result of um going with the goalie, Jeremy Swayman.

So Swayman did not play in the first game.

In the first game, uh, the US gave the start to Connor Hellebuck of the Winnipeg Jets.

Swayman plays for the, um, for the Bruins, um, and has been like one of the best goalies in the NHL, just didn't have it today.

The first one was like a, a, you know, a.

It's a goal of, you know, he probably should have saved it, it was a tip in in front of the net, great pass that the Danish player made a great deflection on.

The second goal was a weird one.

It the guy shot it from like, basically the red line, um, along the boards.

Uh, we talked about the neutral zone being smaller because of this, um , this smaller rink, so took advantage of that decreased size to get a shot off before even entering the offensive zone, and it snuck past, uh, past Swayman.

Then in the start, that was like near the, uh, after commercial break, they came back.

And uh Eddie Olczyk had a great bit of analysis where he was, he was, they're showing a replay.

He says, I think maybe Swayman lost this puck against the boards because the boards in that area were painted black and the black puck, he said, might have disappeared.

I think that's a good point.

It's also like a terrible design by the IOC to put, like, black boards along the, you know, usually the, the boards are all mostly white, right?

Ads and stuff too, but they're primarily white, uh, to help with the visibility with the puck.

And so, this blackboard made it, made it really tough apparently for, for Swayman to save it, uh, you know, two goals in the first period, but then the US was able to, to pull it out at the end there.

But, um, yeah, it's a really troubling result and doesn't make you feel too good about their chances going forward.

Yeah, they just, they don't, you know, they don't have enough people there and, and they were doing the last minute construction.

It's the guys who were gonna be the curling officials.

They were just painting the, the boards black if they left the last minute for some reason.

Um, no, so yeah, you, you mentioned possibly just throwing it out with the black, the backup goalie.

Um, the, uh, the important thing to know here is that they're, they're, they have a back to back, and they have another game tomorrow against Germany, and so I think this was just sort of like schedule maintenance, and they said instead of You know, this is group play, and I think they just figured instead of having their, uh, starting goalie play on two consecutive days, let's just give the backup a day and, um, probably just assume that this was the game, they would be more likely to win with the backup and net.

So, like you said, you know, a little troubling and, and, you know, he's not the only guy on the team, you know, other, other people, uh, contribute to allowing goals besides just the goal, even though we do know how important they are, obviously.

Um, but you'd think that when they've got their, uh, starter back in net, which they should for, uh, you know, if they do advance out of group play and move on, then they, they should be all set.

So there's a party that wants to say like, I'll just, you know, that one didn't happen, like, hey, we escaped with a win, um, and, and survive and advance and all that.

Hellebuck, I should say, he's, he's won the last two Vezna Trophies.

That's the, the award given to the best goalie in the NHL.

It's like, I mean, he's fantastic.

There's another great goalie on the roster, Jake Ottinger of the Dallas Stars.

Um, so they do, if they, if there ever is another situation where they wanna go away from Heebuck, give him some rest, Ottinger is a great option.

Sway is a great option too.

He just had a bad day, letting some two soft goals, but, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, um, like you said, there's some other things that that factored in.

Um, I want to mention also briefly the, um, the action of the, so, like I said, it's group play.

This is the 2nd day in group play for this US group, which includes, uh, obviously Denmark, Latvia, and Germany.

It was the final day in group play for Group B, which was, um, A really interesting race between Slovakia, Finland, and Sweden for who would win that group and thereby win the um one of the 31 of the 4, automatic byes to the quarterfinal round.

There's 3 groups, the top, the group winners all get a bye plus the highest ranked non-group winner.

So, um, early in the day, Sweden beat Slovakia 5 to 3, but there was a really interesting moment.

Late in that game, Slovakia scores, Slovakia is down 5-2.

If that score had ho, I believe Sweden would have won the group, um, or maybe Finland, but, uh, it, it, it was not what it would not have been Slovakia.

Slovakia then scores in the dying moments of the game, uh, to, to make it 5 to 3 , and starts celebrating as if they'd won the game, because this now wins them the tiebreaker, even though they had lost the game, wins them the tiebreaker to win the group.

Sweden, knowing that they didn't need to score another goal for it to benefit, you know, from the goal differential, um, ends up pulling its goalie in the final 3 30 seconds, while by 2 goals, wasn't able to get that goal.

Slovakia wins.

Um, the, the interesting thing there was that the, the goal differential in a three-way tie situation, they're expecting then, uh, Finland to beat Italy, which ended up happening.

Um, the interesting thing there is that to break a 3-way tie, it ends up being goal differential, but only in games between those three teams, so that's why that goal there was so important.

Um, Finland went on to just smack Italy.

It was 11 to 0.

It was 62 to 15 on shots.

Those are both records, uh, in an Olympic game featuring NHL players.

It was like a total bloodbath, and you might ask yourself, why are they pouring it on so much?

Well, the answer is, I mentioned that 4th spot, that 4th bit of the quarterfinal round, that goes to the highest ranked non-group winner.

Finland knows it's not gonna win the group, Slovakia is gonna win, and so, um, They want to make sure that they, they are ranked first on goal differential among all the other remaining teams, and boy are they after that game.

62 shots in in 60 minutes is amazing, yeah, um, and made 11 of them.

That's great.

Um, yeah, that's, uh, it feels goofy things happen when goal differential gets involved.

Uh, so yeah, that's, uh, if you think some of these games are gonna be boring cause they're blowouts, that's, uh, definitely one way to spice it up and, and, and make sure fans are watching, uh, the whole game every time.

That, that's, uh, yeah, that's something.

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So, and make sure your people are paying attention to Slovakia going forward.

This is a really interesting story developing.

Slovakia is like, you know, I think when we had talked before the tournament , we said, you know, it really, it seems like the 4 medal contenders are those 4 teams that took part in that NHL affiliated Four Nations face-off tournament last year, the US, Canada, Sweden, and Finland.

Nobody's really expecting Slovakia to come in and, and, and, and infiltrate that group of medal contenders, but man, they're having a great tournament.

Um, it's been, it's an interesting situation because Slovakia had a great run in the 2000s, uh, some really respectable, no medals, no Olympic medals, but some really great, like, respectable results at Olympic Games.

Uh, they won a world championship.

Some other really notable results.

Um, you, Mitch, I'm gonna shout out some old school players you might recognize that you said you don't follow the NHL so much anymore, but, uh, Yaroslav Ola, Zedino Chara, Miroslav Chatan, and Pavel Dimitra, like these guys are part of a really great generation of, of Slovakian players.

But then in 2014, this is a great story in the Athletic by, uh, Mark Lazarus, one of their hockey writers.

2014, Slovakia loses at the Olympics to Slovenia, and this is like a real low point, like rock bottom for the Slovakian men's hockey program, uh, because Slovenia had one NHL player on the roster, a really inferior team, you would think, ends up beating Slovakia, um, and Halak, who had, who had been the losing goalie, he says to Lazarus in the locker room, he's like, I don't, he's like, I think this is it for us, like, we don't have any, uh, any players really coming through the pipeline.

And so instead, but Slovakia's got this great youth generation coming up right now.

We mentioned, uh, Slavkowski, the, the winger for the Montreal Canadiens, who's playing for them, having a great Olympics.

Um, the interesting thing, and I don't wanna go on forever about Slovakia and hockey, but, um, Slovakia and Finland have about the same population, but Finland's been so much more successful, and so the Slovakian like sports federation were trying to figure out, like, why is that?

They've been, they've been studying Finland.

Um, they've been trying to build like a youth infrastructure there to train hockey players in the same way that Finland does, but the interesting thing, and I'll read here from , uh, Lazarus's story.

Slavkowski and company are, of course, a source of enormous pride in Slovakia.

The dirty little secret, however, is that they're not really a product of the Slovak system.

When Slavkowski was 12 years old, a group of parents, including Slavkowski's father, created their own team outside of the Slovak system that essentially barnstormed across North America.

Of the 14 Slovaks drafted in 2022 and 2023, 8 were on that team.

So there's a really interesting thing developing here where there's this great generation of Slovakian players, like bringing glory to the country's hockey program, but they haven't really been part of that program from a young age, they've been more trained independently.

So a great moment for them, but just a really interesting backstory on how it came to be.

That is interesting, and I hadn't seen any of that.

So listen, you're not, not gonna get any complaints from me.

You're, I, you have permission to go down as many rabbit holes as as you want.

If it's gonna be Slovak hockey, I am supportive.

I think that's what the people, people come to this show for, uh, for, you know, never know what you're gonna get.

And, uh, yeah, you said nobody expected the Slovak hockey.

Team, uh, to be in this mix.

Unfortunately, I do know one man who, uh, who was expecting the team to be in this mix and, and had great personal risk went to go see it in person.

We're still thinking about our buddy in the Italian jail.

I haven't gotten an update on him, so I assume he's still there.

Mitch, I'll close it with, he was not chanting is not Slovak.

Of course, we are, yes, we are deep in Slovak references now, uh, 8 days into the Olympics.