IHWC: Qualification round

The quarterfinals are today, and despite the seeming futility of it, I'm keeping up this prediction thing. In fact, our revised qualifying round prediction didn't go so badly; we got the countries right, with the exception of Slovakia and Germany trading places, but I had mentioned that it was a possibility, so I actually feel pretty good about that!

These are the quarterfinal pairs we expected before the tournament:

Canada-Slovakia
Czech Republic-Finland
USA-Sweden
Russia-Switzerland

This is what we expected after the preliminary round:

Russia - Switzerland
Finland - Czech Republic
Sweden - Slovakia
Canada - Germany

And what we're actually getting is:

Russia - Canada
Finland - Czech Republic
Switzerland - Germany
Sweden - Denmark

NHL.com injected a note of humor into the proceedings with a silly report from the world champs, saying this:

The U.S. finished with a record of 2-1-2-1 (W-OTW-OTL-L) and tied their worst-ever showing by placing 13th in the 16-team field, a position it last finished in 2003.

"I'm proud of our players," said U.S. and New York Islanders coach Scott Gordon. "After the tough start we had, we did a nice job coming back and winning our final three games."

After scoring only four goals in three preliminary-round games -- all losses, two in overtime -- the U.S. exploded for 16 goals to go 3-0 in the relegation round.

Dubinsky currently leads all players with 7 assists and 10 points.

Reading that would give anyone a totally false impression of how Team USA did. Um, "exploded for 16 goals"? Well, they were against France and Kazakhstan. They totally failed to score against such hockey heavyweights as Germany and Denmark... And in fact, because of the world champs format, they most emphatically did not go 3-0 in the relegation round, but 2-1-0-0. Yeah, nice job.

Then again, the other North American team isn't doing much better. Canada has lost every game in the tournament against a top-10 country; they've only beaten Italy, Latvia and Norway, while losing to Switzerland, Sweden and the Czech Republic. So, to preview the quarterfinals, we'll start with:

Russia - Canada

While Canada has been doing pretty poorly, the Russians haven't lost a game at the worlds since 2007. Given that Canada has yet to beat a top ten country at this tournament, this one should be a foregone conclusion. Despite running up the score against the likes of Norway and Italy, in their bigger games the Canadians have been unable to score. Given how easily Varlamov shut out Team Finland, there's really no way Russia should lose this.

And that's what we said at Vancouver.

Finland - Czech Republic

The Czechs have been trending upward all tournament, more or less, with a shaky start (including a regulation loss to Norway) followed by improved play, beating both Sweden and Canada while losing to the Swiss. The Finns have been mediocre throughout, losing decisively to the Danes and Russians and scratching out meagre 1-0 and 2-0 wins against Germany and Belarus. The only team Finland properly beat were the hapless Slovaks, who managed to crash out of the top eight completely.

Finland's great weaknesses are defense and scoring, or in other words, the only good thing about Finland is their goaltending. The young, inexperienced and soft Finnish defence has struggled mightily against everyone, and in the game against Russia they made a steady parade to the penalty box while being unable to stop their opponents anyway. The Czechs' penchant for counter-attacks and short-handed goals will be especially dangerous against them.

The Czechs came out surprisingly strong and physical against Canada, so expect them to do the same here, which will land the Finns in trouble. Finland's strategy is the normal one of playing a tight trap, so it's unlikely to turn into a great game. If they stick to their strengths, the Czechs should win.

Switzerland - Germany

The Germans have put together a good tournament, beating Slovakia to secure a quarterfinal spot, but I'm afraid it's the end of the road for the plucky home team. By rights, the Swiss should win this, but if the home crowd can spur the Germans on to great things, it's not impossible they'll advance. This one could really go either way.

Sweden - Denmark

As it happens, Denmark has more of a chance here than most people seem to think. Sweden has really not been impressive this year, and if Denmark can come out as strongly as they have before, they can shock the Swedes. The Swedish media is already planning the parade route for their gold medals, so their arrogance may well be their downfall. Needless to say, we hope it will.

**

The semifinals are seeded as follows:

FIN/CZE - DEN/SWE
RUS/CAN - GER/SUI

So we expect to see the Czechs take on Sweden, and Russia play Switzerland. If the Czechs can knock the Swedes into the bronze medal game, the Swiss might well secure themselves a medal. On the other hand, if Finland does manage to beat the Czechs, we'll have a quarterfinal for the ages against the Swedes. And Finland will lose.