On the evening of 23.05.2010 the ice hockey wc had its culmination. In front of a sold out house Russia and Czech Republic were facing of whereof the last were not impressed by the current Russian results in this championship.
After the bronze game had ended the reception of the German national team on the ground next to the Lanxess Arena should take place. After waiting for a long time the team arrived and was celebrated for their outstanding performance during the championship. Of course some words of thanks may not be missing and so several players and the coach came up to the microphone to say what is important to them. By that is was a great closure of the championship.
The match for third place was played by Sweden and Germany. You could observe the exertions of the Germans caused by the game against the Russians the day before and so the Swedes directly took the lead by 1:0. But the moral of the Germans was still there unbroken and so opportunity by opportunity was won and was rewarded during second period by the leveler.
After facing the Russians already during qualification round and defeated by 2:3 so there was now the opportunity to have a revenge for that. So they directly tried to do this and the Germans quickly led by 1:0 and had until mid of the second period several and better opportunities to increase even to 2:0.
At the afternoon duell of the semi final day the Swedes were facing the Czech. In a lively game there were a lot opportunities on both sides. It were firstly the Swedes who took over the lead which was directly afterwards answered by the Czech with a goal against.
This game should bring the revenge for the early leaving of the olympic championship against the Canadian. And so the Russians showed immediately why they are the fancied team of this tournament. The Canadians were having no answer to the pressureful way of playing of the Russians and so they tried all the time to provoke them. Incomprehensibly the Russians agreed on that and so there were several bunches to stop. Hard work for the referee and his linesmen.
In the first quarter final game of the day Finnland was facing the Czech Republic. After the Finns took over the lead already after a few minutes it was getting a lively game with lots of opportunities on both sides. It was nearly the end of the third period when the Czech Republic was able to equalize and so it went into the overtime.
The Russians did not have much to do during the last qualification round game of this evening against Finnland. The Finns tried to compete as good as they were able to but again the individual strength of the Russian team was decisive element of this game. And so finally the Russians won 5:0 and were qualified for the quarter final as champion of their group. But also the Finns did not need to be disappointed as they also reached the following round.
The second last game of the qualification round between Slovakia and Germany was about everything which is the qualification for the quarter final. The Germans explicitly knew what to do and so they took the lead by 1:0 during the first period. The Slovakian tried to fight back with all they had but finally had to surrender by 1:2. And by this completely surprising the German national team reached the quarter final where now Switzerland was waiting for them.
Already during warm-up there were interesting scenes when the Belarus professionally destroyed one of the windows behind the goal. But the handy helpers of the Arena were able to fix the damage quickly and so the game could begin on time.