ICE HOCKEY (3)

The Czech Republic unexpectedly won the world championships last night, beating Russia 2-1 in the final. It helped that they scored after just 20 seconds. But they then placed a smothering defence on the Big Red Machine, who didn't score their only goal until 35 seconds to go.

The result was surprising in many ways. Starting with the 2007 bronze medal play-off, the Russians had won 27 world championship games in a row, including the 2008 and 2009 titles. This year they had again bulldozed all before them, avenging the Olympic Games loss to Canada in the quarter-finals and a stubborn Germany in the semi-finals. With an array of NHL stars, they were the hot favourites to win. But against a Czech team battling for everything and content to rest on their early lead, they seemed to run out of ideas.

The Czechs, on the other hand, had been on nobody's list of potential winners, and had only beaten Finland in the quarter-finals and Sweden in the semi-finals on penalties. Against Sweden, with 20 seconds left of normal time and the Czech goalie out in order to give an extra man, the Swedes missed the empty net. A last face-off in the Swedish zone, and the Czechs equalised with 7 seconds left on the clock to send it into extra time! After those nerve-racking experiences, it is perhaps understandable that they handled the pressure of the final better than their opponents.

This is all on ice hockey on this blog for 2010. I know that the NHL Stanley Cup play-offs are still going on, but they don't grip me in the same way. I watched a bit of the Philadelphia-Montreal semi-final play-offs after the world championships, but - and this is going to annoy my North American readers - it was a bit like watching a fourth division football match after you have just seen the Premier League. One reason is that NHL ice rinks are quite a bit narrower than international ones. That makes it more difficult to skate past defencemen, which in turn leads to a "hit and chase" type of ice hockey. Good for generating fights, but not for the purists.

Walter Blotscher