The Medal/Relegation rounds have arrived. To recap where all the teams are at:
Pool B Pool A
1st Sweden Canada
2nd Russia US
3rd Finland Switzerland
4th Czech Slovakia
5th Austria Latvia
Three games today – however, because I’m such a mean guy, I let Stewart sleep in (again) and to allow him some study time, we skip the relegation game. (Relegation games are between the 4th and 5th place teams to see who gets bounced from next years tournament – likely Austria and Latvia at this point)
For the first quarter-final game, it’s the Russians versus the Swiss. The winner goes on to meet Canada in the semi-finals. On paper the Russians should easily handle the Swiss. But we know the Swiss have a great goalie and we haven’t seen the Russians play yet. But they did finish 2nd in their pool and the Swiss finished 3rd in our pool by upsetting the Slovak’s in their last game. The game itself for the most part was quiet – both teams playing well. The scoring breaks out in the 2nd period with the Russians up 2-1. They seem stronger but the Swiss faster. A lot of penalties are called against the Swiss. The third period brings much the same strong play but no goals in sight. In the dying seconds of the third, the Swiss score to tie the game and force overtime.
4 on 4 overtime arrives and both teams appear to play a fairly neutral style of play. It almost seems as though they want a shoot out. But again, in the dying seconds of overtime, the Swiss score to win. Their second upset win in two days. They face Canada today. We beat them handily before but I don’t think they’ll go down without a fight and our boys better be prepared and at their best.
For the second quarter-final, it’s the US versus Finland. The US finished 2nd and the Fins finished 3rd. We don’t have a lot of hope for the Fins but since we’ve never seen them play, we can always hope for another upset. The Fins play well, out shooting the US by a margin of 2:1 – which is really quite something. They’re certainly faster than the US but simply cannot put the puck in the net as well and they don’t have the plays to make it happen. Every once in a while though, they’d do all the right stuff and score but it’s too little and they can’t keep up. The US wins and they go on to meet the Swedes today. It should be quite a match as Team Canada did beat Sweden in a preliminary game but Sweden won all four of their pre-medal games and have lost two years in a row to Team Canada in the gold medal game. I’m sure they want another shot at it, but I’m pretty sure the US will want it too.
Now for some non-hockey stuff. We wandered over to “WorldFest” between games and I finally managed to have some perogies – they were delish (the ones at the rink were deep fried and quite terrible). We also managed to stumble across a version of a Tiny Tim’s donut shop but they were really greasy. Good, but way too greasy. So then we found a fudge shop. Imagine that. Quite good and reasonably priced at $6.50 per slice. Hopefully by the end of the trip, we’ll manage to get through as many flavours as we can. It’ll be tough, but we’re from Toronto eh, and we can do it.
the world of jim 
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