Czechia and Denmark will battle on Tuesday for the right to face Canada in the Olympic quarterfinals.
With the preliminaries now over and the number one seed secured, Team Canada will now sit back and watch Czechia and Denmark duke it out on Tuesday in the Olympic Qualification Playoff round.
The good news for the winner of that game? They get to advance to the quarterfinals, where they'll be one win away from the semis and a chance to play for an Olympic medal. The bad news? They'll have to play the very next day against a well-rested, powerhouse Canadian team.
But lest we forget, Czechia and Denmark have both given Canada trouble in the recent hockey past.
At the World Juniors, Czechia has been up in Canada's face for three years now, eliminating them in each of the last three tournaments, while the Czechia men's national team won the World Hockey Championships in 2024.
And don't sleep on Denmark either.
Many of the current Canadian Olympians, like Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Macklin Celebrini and Jordan Binnington, were on the Canadian team that fell to the Danes 2-1 in the quarterfinals of the 2025 World Hockey Championships.
Ottawa Senators veteran Lars Eller wasn't a member of that Denmark team, but as the only Danish player ever to win a Stanley Cup, he knows a thing or two about big games.
Eller was also Denmark's captain during Olympic qualification in 2024 when they defeated Norway, Great Britain and Japan to get to Milan for just the second Olympic appearance in their history. Eller led the Danes with two goals and two assists through those three games. In these games, he has one assist, along with 4 penalty minutes and a -2 rating.
The 36-year-old was joined on the team by Belleville Senators goalie Mads Sogaard, who played 51 minutes against the Americans before leaving the game with an injury. He made 33 saves on 38 shots in a 6-3 loss.
He and Eller are two of only six players on Denmark's roster who've played NHL games this season. The others are Nikolaj Ehlers, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Oscar Moelgaard, and starting goalie Frederik Andersen.
Frank Dichow has never played in the NHL, but he was in goal for last spring's quarterfinal shocker against Canada, and is also available for what the Danes hope will be a back-to-back situation this week.
If they do get to the quarters, the Danes will be badly outmatched, playing on short rest, and because of last spring's historic upset, there won't be a single player in Canada's locker room looking past them. Being on the wrong end of one of the greatest upsets in hockey history isn't something you soon forget.
As he prepared to make his Olympic debut earlier this month, Eller fondly recalled his childhood, watching the NHL's return to the Olympics in 1998 all the way to the 2010 games in Vancouver, when he was breaking in with the AHL's old Peoria Rivermen.
“Every Olympics is pretty memorable," Eller said in an interview with Senators writer Andrew Wilimek. "You remember flashes and players from those eras, so that’s pretty cool to think back on that, and now you’re going to be on that stage yourself.”
Meanwhile, if Canada's opponent is to be Czechia (1-1-1), which will be the favourite in Tuesday's Qualification Playoff matchup with Denmark, the Czechs bring a lot more NHL experience to the table, not to mention two former Senators.
Filip Chlapik, Ottawa's 2015 second-round draft pick, is Czechia's second-leading scorer with two goals and an assist. They also have forward Dominik Kubalik, one of the players acquired from Detroit in the Alex DeBrincat trade. Kubalik was ineffective in his one season in Ottawa and hasn't done much yet in his two games.
But the Czechs, despite their 5-0 loss to Canada, do have serious NHL game breakers in David Pastrnak (3 pts) and Martin Necas (5 pts). They also have Tomas Hertl, Ondrej Palat, Filip Hronek, Radko Gudas, and a solid goaltending tandem of Dan Vladar and Lukas Dostal.
On paper, Canada should be able to handle either nation in Wednesday’s quarterfinal (10:40 a.m. ET), but single-elimination hockey has a way of ignoring the script.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
This article was first published at The Hockey News-Ottawa. Read more Senators features and articles from THN Ottawa here:
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