Sochi, Russia (SportsNetwork.com) – Roman Cervenka scored two goals to help send the Czech Republic to the quarterfinals with a 5-3 win over late-charging Slovakia Tuesday at the Sochi Olympics.<\/p>\n
With a lead that grew to four goals late in the second period, the Czechs probably didn’t expect to need an empty-net goal from Tomas Plekanec to seal what appeared to be a runaway victory.<\/p>\n
Marian Hossa keyed the Slovak comeback with two goals, and Tomas Surovy closed the gap to 4-3 with 11:09 to play in the third period.<\/p>\n
Slovakia continued to push for the equalizer, forcing Czech goaltender Ondrej Pavelec to make critical saves, but defenseman Andrej Meszaros committed a slashing penalty to thwart a Czech odd-man rush with 52.2 seconds left.<\/p>\n
Plekanec lit the lamp with 38.7 to go, as the Czechs advanced to play the United States on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cervenka’s first strike came during a three-goal opening period that represented an offensive explosion for a club that averaged two goals per game while going 1-2 in the preliminary round.<\/p>\n
David Krejci and Ales Hemsky also scored for the Czechs. Tomas Kaberle posted two assists and Pavelec stopped 29 shots.<\/p>\n
Third-string goaltender Jan Laco made 24 saves for the Slovaks, who finished winless in the Winter Games.<\/p>\n
Hossa put Slovakia on the board with 1:03 remaining in the second. He and Surovy then scored 1:31 apart to make things interesting.<\/p>\n
Pavelec directed a rebound right onto Hossa’s stick and he buried the puck at 7:20. The Slovaks then caught the Czechs in a line change and Surovy hammered Milan Bartovic’s pass, beating Pavelec on the glove side with a slap shot from the high slot at 8:51.<\/p>\n
The Czechs grabbed a 2-0 lead on goals separated by 29 seconds.<\/p>\n
Hemsky scored 15 seconds into a power play. After a point shot created a scramble in front of Laco, Hemsky took a pass off his skate in the slot and fired a shot into the far side of the net at 6:53 of the first.<\/p>\n
Cervenka then ripped a backhander over a prone Laco seconds after Plekanec had struck the post with his backhand attempt.<\/p>\n
A one-time blast by Krejci on a power play made it 3-0 with 2:57 left.<\/p>\n
Cervenka extended the lead to 4-0 when he stole the puck in the neutral zone, deked and roofed a backhander from a sharp angle on a breakaway with 4:19 to play in the middle stanza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sochi, Russia (SportsNetwork.com) – Roman Cervenka scored two goals to help send the Czech Republic to the quarterfinals with a 5-3 win over late-charging Slovakia Tuesday at the Sochi Olympics. With a lead that grew to four goals late in the second period, the Czechs probably didn’t expect to need an empty-net goal from Tomas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}