The Senators star reflected on his Olympic disappointment following Tuesday's quarterfinal loss to Slovakia
Team Germany may have entered the men's Olympic hockey tournament with a higher world ranking than Slovakia, but the Slovaks apparently didn't get the memo.
In Wednesday's quarterfinal, they eliminated Germany 6-2, advancing to the semifinals for a second straight Olympics. Slovakia won bronze in 2022, but with no NHL player involvement, this trip to the semis means that much more.
Surprisingly enough, with Wednesday's four-goal victory, the Slovaks had the easiest path to the semis. Everyone else had to work overtime in their quarterfinal matchups.
Slovakia will now face Team USA, which beat Sweden 2-1 in overtime.
Canada goes up against Finland in a battle of two teams that came back from the dead in their respective quarterfinals, scoring late to tie their games, then winning in 3-on-3 overtime.
As for Germany, their tournament is over, and Senators winger Tim Stutzle came away from Tuesday's game wondering what might have been.
"It was a fun experience," Senators winger Tim Stutzle told TSN's Mark Masters. "I wish it would’ve ended different.
"Before (the tournament), if you would’ve said we would play in the quarterfinal, I would have been happy with that, but at the end of the day, I feel like we left something on the table and could have definitely won that game (over Slovakia)."
That's a fairly optimistic view of a game where Germany fell behind 4-0 by the midway point of the game and was outshot in the contest, 35-27. And given that Germany's only wins in the tournament came against Denmark and France, they seemed quite fortunate just to be in the quarterfinals.
It's quite possible that Stutzle and the Germans began to run out of gas in this one. Through the first four games, they had been riding their NHL stars hard, simply because there's such a sharp drop off from stars like Stutzle, Leon Draisaitl, Mo Seider and JJ Peterka.
Draisaitl and Seider played close to 28 minutes in the loss. Stutzle's TOI average per game at the Olympics was 21:55, and he faced a steady diet of opponents' best defenders.
Masters alluded to Stutzle getting his shoulder checked out, which Stutzle didn't directly respond to, but he's clearly a man who could use a few days off to rest before fully rejoining the Senators.
"Yeah, to be honest, I'm pretty exhausted," Stutzle said. "My body's hurting, but I'm excited to get back to playing (NHL) hockey again."
Stutzle exits the Olympic tournament with 4 goals and 6 points in five games and humbly described his individual play as "all right."
The Senators don't play again until next Wednesday, when they host the Detroit Red Wings in a game where Stutzle and Seider will shelve their mutual Olympic dreams and become Atlantic rivals again.
Meanwhile, Sens head coach Travis Green, who's never been shy to give players maintenance days when required, might be inclined to offer up a maintenance week to his tired, beaten-up star forward.
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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