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World-class goalie Zuzana Tomcikova is used to facing a lot of shots. When these two teams met in the round-robin stage of the tournament, she was outshot badly but still forced the game to a shootout, where the Czechs prevailed. Although they won, the Czech women knew they were the better team and did not want to gamble on a shootout again. In the end, it wasn’t needed.
They had the Slovaks back on their heels right from the start, peppering Tomcikova with shots, getting traffic in front, and with the teams playing 4-on-4 they really started pouring on the pressure. First a deflection by Ledlova that Tomcikova didn’t even see bounced dangerously wide of the post. But the ball went back to the blueline where Nemcova fired a blast that Tomcikova never saw just past the seven-minute mark.
For the rest of the first period and all of the second, the chances kept coming. Then late in the second the Slovaks almost tied it - from a faceoff in the Czech zone Lucia Zaborska blasted a slapper that Zechovska got a shoulder on. While she wasn’t really busy, the Czech goalie came up big when needed.
In the dying seconds of the period, the Czechs widened their lead. It was a grinding goal, resulting from going hard to the net and not giving up. There was a wild scramble in the goalmouth, with Ledlova finally putting it in.
WIth a two-goal lead against the offensively light Slovaks, the Czechs were confident they could bring the game home in the third period and they did, much to the delight of their home fans.
Reactions
Karel Manhart (head coach, Team Czech Republic): Our goal from the start has been to make the final, so I am definitely satisfied at this moment. I have to thank the girls for reaching one of our goals. This game was mainly about not making costly mistakes. When we got the first goal, we calmed down, and after that we did what we had to do defensively to win the game.
Beáta Rišianová (head coach, Team Slovakia): We just couldn’t score a goal, which proved costly in this game. Unfortunately we have another injured player on our side, which is taking its toll. We don’t have many more places that we can take players from. It will be difficult to deal with the last game coming up.
