It's quarterfinal day at the IIHF Men's World Championship. Simulating Canada vs. Slovakia in NHL 24
We're back at it with another simulation for the IIHF Men's World Championship. This time around we got the quarterfinal matchup between Canada and Slovakia.
Canada went a perfect 7-0 in the round-robin and finished in the top spot of Group A. Canada's Dylan Cozens leads the tournament in goals with eight and captain John Tavares has been phenomenal with seven points in six games.
Slovakia had a tougher go about things in their round-robin play, finishing fourth in Group B with a record of 3-1-1-2. Libor Hudacek has led the way for his team with nine points in the preliminary round. NHLers Martin Pospisil, Juraj Slafkovsky, Simon Nemec, and Tomas Tatar have been key contributors to Slovakia's offense.
Unfortunately, Pospisil went hard into the boards in their game against Sweden, and his tournament is done with what we can only assume is a shoulder/arm injury from the video.
The simulation used lineups from both teams' last games. Marek Hrivik replaced the injured Martin Pospisil for Slovakia.
In the simulation, the second period was quite eventful after each team scored in the first. Canada dominated the second frame outshooting Slovakia 28-2. Despite the onslaught attack, the Slovaks scored the lone goal in the period. Slovakia added an early goal in the third period to go up 3-1 before Andrew Mangiapane scored to get Canada within one.
However, the comeback was to no avail, and Slovakia closed out the simulation with a 3-2 victory although being outshot 46-21.
Slovakia’s goaltender Samuel Hlavaj was simply incredible making 44 saves and stopping all 28 shots he faced in that second period. It makes sense that he was lights-out good in the simulation because in real life he put up a .939 save percentage and a 1.93 goals-against average in the prelims.
Canada is seen as the favorite to win their quarterfinal matchup. And if Slovakia has any chance of handing Canada’s first loss of the tournament, it may have to be off the backs of a stellar performance in net like the one we saw in our simulation.
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