Hockey World Championship 2021 (US morning/afternoon hockey)

[Tomas]

Schedule:
https://www.iihf.com/en/events/2021/wm/schedule

All games live on:
http://onhockey.tv/

[Tomas]

Bob Hartley - he wins the KHL Championship with Avangard Omsk. And then he goes for his "summer job" - coaching the National Team of Latvia - and leads the team to the victory over Canada for the first time in history...

[mikey]

Man, I'd love to be out in Riga tonight...

[Tomas]

This is getting crazy:

Canada: 3 games, 0/9 points (including losses to Latvia and Germany)
Sweden: 2 games, 0/6 points (losses to Denmark and Belarus)
Czech Republic: 3 games, 2/9 points (just an OTW over Belarus)

Meanwhile,

Germany: 3 games, 9/9 points
Slovakia: 3 games 9/9 points (including victory over Russia)
Latvia: 3 games, 7/9 points

Luckily, nobody gets to be relegated this year (special COVID exemptions) - otherwise CAN/SWE/CZE would be the primary candidates...

[mikey]

Great Britain upset Belarus 4:3. First win since 1962 I think they said...

[Tomas]

Great Britain upset Belarus 4:3.

I don't remember any other WC in the history where the results would be such a "random number generator" so deeply into the tournament. There are multiple upsets every day.

Another gem today: Germany beats Canada - and then loses to Kazakhstan (which, other than losing to the US, actually won 3 out of 4 games played) today...

[Tomas]

Completely random generator of goal numbers indeed.

Switzerland beats everybody (including the Czech Republic easily), then plays Sweden with no points and losses to Denmark and Belarus). Yet Switzerland loses 7:0!

The very next game, Swiss face Slovakia - which beat all of their opponents, including Russia. The game is not over, and Switzerland is up 8:1...

[Tomas]

Quarterfinals:

Russia (A1) vs. Canada (B4)
Switzerland (A2) vs. Germany (B3)
Czech Republic (A3) vs. Finland (B2)
Slovakia (A4) vs. USA (B1)

After tons of surprising results, the only "unexpected" QF miss is Sweden - out of Top 8 in World Championship for the first time since 1937(?)...

[Tomas]

USA completely dominates Slovakia in the QF game after the 1st period (3:0). If you want to see the rest of the game:
www.onhockey.tv

[Tomas]

USA beats Slovakia 6:1 in the WC quarterfinals:



In the semifinals, US will face either Germany (who surprisingly beat Switzerland 3:2(SO) in the second QF game) or Canada (in case CAN manages an unlikely victory over Russia).

[Tomas]

All 4 teams from the Group A gone (Finland-Czech Republic 1:0; Canada-Russia 2:1 OT). Semifinals on Saturday:
USA - Canada (6:15 AM CDT)
Finland - Germany (10:15 AM CDT)

[Gaucho]

And here I thought Group A was the stronger group ...

[Tomas]

After 5 group games, the odds on Canada WC victory at some bet makers were higher than 20:1.

Today, Canada beat Finland to capture their 27th championship (tying the all-time record of USSR/Russia) 3:2 in OT.

Canada is the first team in history to win the championship after starting with three straight regulation losses and the first team in history to win the championship after losing 4 games at the group stage (after losing to Latvia, Germany, and the US in regulation, they also lost to Finland in OT).

USA apparently played the best hockey of all teams at the WC (losing only 2 games total), but due to the SF loss to Canada, the team only got bronze after beating Germany 6:1 in the 3rd place game.

Germany kept off the medal stage for 68 straight years...

Groups for the 2022 WC in Finland also announced today:

Group A (Helsinki):
Canada, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Italy

Group B (Tampere):
Finland, USA, Czech Republic, Sweden, Latvia, Norway, Belarus, Great Britain