The price of experiments: the Russian team lost to the Czech team in the final match of the winning Karjala Cup

Even before the final match with the Czech Republic, the Russian national team could bravely put on board their performance at the Karjala Cup. The wards of Ilya Vorobyov at a high level held the starting meetings of the tournament and achieved confident victories, which guaranteed her first place in the standings. Only the Czech Republic’s team could prevent or at least delay the triumph of the Red Car, but it could not cope with the hosts of the competition.

Thus, the Russian hockey players won the main trophy of the tournament even before the final match and interrupted their unsuccessful series of performances in the framework of the Euro Hockey Tour. In the Swedish and Czech games, the national team took only the third and fourth places, respectively, and the last victory was won in the home Channel One Cup. At the Finnish stage, the current Olympic champions have not won at all since 2016.

Match status pushed the coaching staff to experiment. Vorobyov made seven changes in the composition at once in comparison with the game with Sweden. Ilya Sorokin, who brilliantly won back with the Finns, took the place in the goal, Ilya Mikheyev, who recovered from injury, appeared in the second five, and Denis Zernov and Anatoly Golyshev returned to the third link. At the same time, Dinara Khafizullin was given a rest, and a pair of Alexander Elesin was defended by the Nizhny Novgorod “Torpedo” Denis Barantsev.

At the beginning of the meeting, there was not even a hint of a lack of proper motivation in the actions of Russian hockey players. In the very opening, they forced rivals to break the rules, and only 12 seconds later they realized a numerical advantage. Nikita Nesterov struck a cannon shot from the blue line, and Kirill Kaprizov brilliantly played on the finishing and ferried a projectile into the goal from an acute angle. By the way, for the CSKA forward, this puck was the first in the tournament.

But the Czechs are not just like that always been considered one of the most awkward rivals for the Russians. Wards of Milos Riha acted in a firm power manner, constantly crushing their opponents, and already in the middle of the period they organized a return goal. Roman Horak took advantage of the inconsistency of the defenders and performed the transfer along the gate to Michal Rzepik. The Slovan forward turned out to be accurate and made Sorokin take the puck out of his own goal for the first time in the tournament.

But even before the end of the period, the Russian national team went ahead in the long run. Wards Vorobiev again received a numerical advantage and did not fail to take advantage of their chance. During the attack, three Russians immediately appeared on the “patch” at the Czech gates, and the most agile of them was Alexey Vasilevsky. Brother goalkeeper "Tampa Bay Lightning," responded to the transfer of Mikhail Grigorenko and scored his first goal for the national team.

However, in the second segment of the meeting, the wards of Vorobiev came out noticeably relaxed. They looked much sharper on someone else’s half of the site, and began to make unforced errors on their own. This was immediately followed by the punishment of two missed goals. Already in the second minute Dominic Kubalik equalized the score, and ten minutes brought the Czech Republic ahead. At the same time, in both episodes, the defenders of the Russian team looked extremely slurred: at first they gave the 23-year-old striker a free throw, and then left him uncovered one meter from Sorokin's goal.

Unfortunately, the Russian hockey team failed to tilt the scales in their favor. In the third period, they almost completely possessed the initiative and were in the rival zone, but they brilliantly played in defense. The Olympic champions and the two deletions as part of the opponent did not help, spoiling the statistics of the realization of the majority. In the end, the Czechs even three times upset the winners of the Karjal Cup, and twice the puck was sent to an empty net.

After the lost match, Vorobyov did not agree with the opinion that the coaching staff failed to properly set up the hockey players for the match with the Czech Republic, but noted that the first link of the Russian national team was not the best way.

“Whims, Grigorenko and Loktionov lost their micromatch with a score of“ minus three ”? In hockey there are such moments. But, of course, I don’t want to see a repetition of such situations, ”RIA Novosti quotes Vorobiev.

At the same time, Roman Rotenberg, the first vice-president of the Russian Hockey Federation (FHR), assessed the results of the Karjal Cup as positive.

“We won the tournament, had a great first two matches, at a very high pace. The team played modern hockey, fully complying with the requirements of the coaching staff. The third meeting of the national team failed. There is something to work on. The Finnish stage gave the right food for thought. Soon the First Channel Cup, we are laying the foundation for the World Cup. There is a systematic preparation, ”concluded Rotenberg.