Semi-finals coming - What's gonna happen?

It's time for Semi-finals in these World Championships. There's been many exciting games so far, and even some surprises (Like Norway in top-8, their victory against Germany, France's good games, Canada and Sweden out...). I'm going to rate the remaining teams and make some predictions about the final results..

1. Russia
2. Czech Republic
3. Finland
4. Slovakia

1. Russia

Well, Russia.. The "Red Machine", the killing machine etc. They have played very convincing games so far. They have been A Team for first time in many years. Everyone seem to play together, and there hasn't been any soloing so far. The only dark cloud on them is A.Ovechkin; Can he really play for the team, or is he going to be the Diva again and ruin the whole teams game, like so many times before? He is the x-factor in team.

Russia will probably make a solid performance against Finland and advance to the Finals. And they will go on unbeaten to the end.

3. Finland

One of the hosts in these games. Finland has played quite well so far, lost only two games ( against Canada and USA), and they seem to have a fine team there. But I'm still not convinced. Even if their Team Spirit is good and the fans are supportive, the material can't just bear good Russia. The only hope is that their goalie sucks on semi-finals, or that Russia starts to play as individuals.

My guess is, that Finland loses, but beats Slovakia in the Bronze medal game.

2. Czech Republic

They've done it again! The "underdog" (if you can use that term on a team which has many world-class stars) won Sweden and advanced to the semi-finals. They are just too good, and Slovakia won't be able to break their game. In final, well.. Czech's hope is their counterattacks, which are deadly and rather effective. If Russia lets them do that, they might be able to take the brightest medal. Maybe.

4. Slovakia

Well done beating Canada, but there were many things that helped 'em to do it. First of all, Canadians were too arrogant and thought that they are already in the Final... But no, it's hockey, and anything can happen. Slovakia resembles a bit of Finland's team last year - A good combined mix of youth and experience, good team spirit, hard belief in their abilities... But I still can't think that they could win the cold. If they advance to the finals, they might have a slight chance to take the victory as a team, but I can't believe that they would do any good at bronze medal game. The flow must be used, before it's broken for good...

Russia-Norway Live scores

Watch ice hockey live stream, Norway, Russia, Watch ice hockey live, katso jääkiekon mm-kisat ilmaiseksi, games for free, world championships

http://www.sstv.co/p/stream-2_18.html

Russia- Norway   2-1

1-0 Oveckin
1-1 Per-åke Skröder
2-1 Popov

-- End of Period 1 --


2-2!! Thoresen (Ask)


End of period 2


3-2 Jemelin
4-2
5-2...

Norway beats Germany 12-4

What a glorious victory for Team Norway!! They made one of the biggest surprise in the late history of the ice hockey. They also made the most goals during the 21st century. Got to admid, it was convincing, and actually Norwegians showed that they have a skill to score.

Patrick Thoresen. Well, what a player..

Communism blooms

Well yeah, after the ticket scandal another scandal seems to bloom: Youtube has made their broadcasts on IIHF championships 30 mins delayed. So every game streamed there is a bit delayed. That's bullshit, and makes me feel very angry. Tv channel's, who owns the rights for these games, must have made a deal (or they have threatened) youtube, so they won't stream live. It's just.. insane. In the world of "free" knowledge and free data, there's still some dinosaurs who stops us from seeing the games for free..

It's just cheating, and EU should do something about it.

More on IIHF: http://www.iihf.com/de/competition/272/news/news-singleview-2012/recap/6905.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=5853&cHash=9d4bd4ae4e

Slovakia beats USA 4-2

Well well, Slovakia made the group rather interesting.. Winning USA keeps them in the play for the top-4 position.

Slovakia was better during the whole game, and USAs goalie Howard wasn't that good today. It made possible for Slovakia to win.

USAs best player was Paul Stastny, USA's was Zdeno Chara.

The another game in the evening (In Stockholm) is in number 1-6 for Sweden (in the 2nd period). They are playing against Denmark.

Comment on Chara's MVP: Usually the MVP is a forward, who has scored the most points, or the goalie, who was making many saves. Defs do good work, too. And now they got some credit for it.

The other Game ended 4-6 for Sweden. Denmark fought well on the third and made 3 goals, but the gap was a bit too big to be lost.. Next time then. But the MVP were: Philip Larsen (Den), Loui Eriksson(Swe).

Norway's developing a big surprise

A game between Norway and Czech Republic is being 3-3 on overtime. The game so far has been rather tight; Czechs had a couple of big momentum there, but eventually Norway was able to shoot more and make the goals needed for overtime.

The final result was 4-3 on penalty shots (shootout competition). Jakub Kovar took all the shots and made some great saves on the shootouts. Haugen wasn't bad either, but Norway's players weren't able to score the necessary goal.

The outcome of this game was, that Norway seems to have a good and solid team this year, which they can play well with. On the contrary, Czech Republic is having a lousy and lazy team, and they won't go very far without a bit of luck.

Stockholm: Latvia made the biggest surprise so far

Latvia was able to beat Germany on 6th May with 3-2 numbers. The victory was probably the biggest surprise for Ted Nolan's group so far. Losing this game was clearly a big disappointment for the German team, and it makes their way to the top 4 a little bit harder.

Best players of the game were from Germany Kai Hospelt (#18), and from Team Latvia Mikelis Redlihs (#24). Latvia was the underdog during the game, but they were able to score the necessary goals.

Both goalies were quite good, Masalskis was one of the top reasons for Latvias win; on the contrary, with Endras, Germany was given the chance to tie this game or even win it.