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Men's hockey: Swedes in driver's seat after defeating Czechs
By Alan Robinson
Associated Press
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — Tommy Salo outdueled Dominik Hasek in a matchup of gold medal goalies and Sweden beat the defending champion Czech Republic 2-1 Sunday for its second consecutive impressive victory.
Mats Sundin scored his third goal in two games and Kim Johnsson had a power play goal as Sweden — following up its unexpectedly easy 5-2 victory Friday over Canada — opened up a 2-0 lead, then weathered a strong last two periods by the Czechs.
Johnsson scored at 4:45 of the first by one-timing Nicklas Lidstrom's pass off Hasek's right leg pad and the post. Sundin made it 2-0 by pouncing on a loose puck along the left wing boards and wristing it through traffic past Hasek early in the second period.
The victory all but assured Sweden of winning its four-team pool in the Olympic hockey tournament — the United States likely will win the other. Sweden, whose final round-robin game is Monday against Germany, will almost certainly have a favorable quarterfinal round matchup against Belarus.
Hasek was the best player in the 1998 Olympics, giving up only two goals in the last three games while making one remarkable save after another, but was not as good Sunday as Salo, who led Sweden to the 1994 gold medal.
Salo made 37 saves, 30 in the last two periods, as the Czechs came at him in wave after wave of scoring attempts.
But, despite being cheered by a predominantly pro-Czech crowd that waved flags, chanted soccer songs and serenaded its goalie with choruses of "Ha-sek!, Ha-sek!," the defending gold medalists could not get the tying goal.
Jiri Dopita cut the lead to 2-1 by scoring unassisted at 10:23 of the second, grabbing his own rebound and wristing it past Salo.
But, despite the pre-Olympic hype given Canada, the United States, Russia and the Czechs, Sweden has been the dominating team so far, despite a couple of serious mistakes by Sundin in the third period.
Sweden seemed in great shape to add on to its lead when the Czechs' Martin Havlat drew a five-minute penalty and was ejected for boarding Michael Nylander with 7:44 remaining. But Sundin short-circuited the long power play by twice drawing penalties, for roughing and holding, leaving the teams at even strength for most of the five minutes.
Sweden's play so far has been all the more surprising because it is without its best player, Peter Forsberg, who recently had surgery. The loss was only the 17th in the Czech Republic's last 77 games in world-level play.
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February 17, 2002
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