Olympic Blurbs : Golden Rematches

The quarterfinal round started off with an early game between the #1 seed Sweden and Slovenia. As you would expect, the Swedes out shot Slovenia 38 to 19 during their 5-0 win to advance to the semifinals. Sweden got two goals from Carl Hagelin along with goals from Alexander Steen, Loui Eriksson and Daniel Sedin, who hasn’t scored in about 100 years. Johnny Oduya picked up his first point of the tournament with the secondary assist on Eriksson’s goal.

Blackhawks Stats

The other half of that bracket saw Finland knock of Russia 3-1 in what some people called a “major upset.” Those people are dumb. I don’t consider a game in which the better team wins an upset. Russia got on the board first with a goal from Ilya Kovalchuk but that would be the only tally from the host country. Juhamatti Aaltonen, Teemu Selanne and Mikael Granlund would score the last three goals of the contest. Tuuka Rask came up huge with his best game of the tournament, stopping 37 of the 38 shots he saw. Finland moves on to play Sweden, the team they lost to in the 2006 Gold Medal game, at 6 am CDT Friday morning.

Latvia almost pulled off an Olympic upset of the size we haven’t seen since Lake Placid, NY in 1980. Latvian goaltender Kristers Gudlevskis had a game for the ages holding the Canadians to just two goals on 57 shots. Patrick Sharp scored his first goal of the tournament to give Canada a 1-0 lead early in the 2^nd period. Lauris Darzins tied the game up with less than five minutes to go in the 2^nd. Shea Weber would score a power play goal with just under seven minutes to go to unclench the buttholes of all of Canada. Jonathan Toews picked up the secondary assist on the game winning goal. This sets up a Canada, United States rematch from the 2010 Gold Medal game in Vancouver. Jen will be recapping the US game later this afternoon.

Blackhawks Stats

Blackhawks Olympic Scoring Totals

Olympics Scoring Totals By NHL Team