Olympics: Lucas Raymond and Elias Pettersson Lead Sweden Past Slovakia

The Swede’s have had a less than desirable start to their Olympic Games. With a closer-than-comfortable win over the home team Italy and a loss to their rivals in Finland. Largely, their offence couldn’t seem to convert. Be it good goaltending or poor finishing, Sweden wasn’t getting the puck in the net.

The Slovaks have had an alternate story. Jumping out to an upset-win over Finland and a tight win over Italy, Slovakia leads the group with a 2-0-0-0 record. From great goaltending to high octane offence from Montreal forward Juraj Slafkovsky, Slovakia looked like they were destined to come out of the group until Sweden made it awkward today.

Each of the three top teams would go two wins and one loss, meaning it would come down to goal differential if the Swedish team was to take a win. Unfortunately for the Slovaks, Sweden had a chip on his shoulder.

Game Summary:

1st Period

12:28 SWE GOAL: Joel Eriksson Ek, A: Adrian Kempe

11:01 SVK GOAL: Juraj Slafkovsky, A: Simon Nemec, Martin Gernat

2nd Period

12:57 SWE GOAL: Adrian Kempe, A: Rasmus Dahlin, Lucas Raymond

10:13 SVK GOAL: Martin Gernat, A: Peter Ceresnak, Adam Ruzicka

5:31 SWE GOAL: Elias Pettersson, A: Filip Forsberg, Victor Hedman

3rd Period

12:03 SWE GOAL: Elias Pettersson, A: Lucas Raymond, Erik Karlsson

8:22 SWE GOAL: Lucas Raymond, A: Mika Zibanejad, Erik Karlsson

0:39 SVK GOAL: Dalibor Dvorsky, A: Juraj Slafkovsky, Peter Ceresnak

Games Notes:

Detroit’s Lucas Raymond showed out tonight for Sweden, his three points give him four points through three games in the tournament. Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin continues to be Sweden’s MVP grabbing another point tonight. The real story though was Elias Pettersson finding his game and netting two goals. He compliments Lucas Raymond really well.

I’ll give myself credit calling out the change for Jacob Markstrom who played a steady game for Sweden. I’d imagine he’s the starter for this team going forward. On the back end, the game that Erik Karlsson played impressed me a lot given my qualms with his game.

As for the Slovakian team, the takeaway remains that Juraj Slafkovsky can carry this team further than he reasonably should. Despite getting the late goal, I would like to see more from Dalibor Dvorsky. Slovakia is under-armed compared to the rest of the world and the record they have is already impressive. However the playoff bracket is going to need more than just heroic performances from Tatar and Slafkovsky.

In the final rankings of their group, Finland topped the group, Sweden finished second and despite the great tournament Slovakia finished in third. Obviously we’re far from the medal games, but each team has put the world on notice that they may be an underrated choice to pick up some hardware.

Unfortunately, each team has shown serious cracks. Cracks that need to be filled before they take on one of the top teams like Canada or the United States. It’s a strong group, but there really is levels to their tournament and it’s going to take some revisions before we see anyone from this group in the finals.

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