Great work in the finals, resilience and the team really grew on top of beating the USA team. The win was clearly stolen from them, due to lack of evidence, Swedish goalie yanked the puck out of his goal - clear as day light, but it would be hard to demand this type of fair play from a teenager in such a meaningful game - to go out and admit that. And we didn't see any video evidence, clearly showing the puck has crossed the goal line.
Best of luck to these guys going forward in their careers.
I agree. The puck rolled just past the goalie's skate toward the goal line, and Podkolzin knocked it over the goal line and into the goal, just underneath the goalie's pad. He clearly fished the puck out with his glove and moved it out of the goal. I thought they would disallow it because there was not enough of a view of the puck, but there is no doubt that it was a goal!
Overall, the tournament was like night and day - night, the preliminary round, which was at times like a nightmare, and then day, the medal round, where Russia came within a hair of winning the Gold medal. I have to be impressed with Filatov for motivating the guys to believe in themselves and fight really hard, and also by coming up with innovative strategies to blunt the attacks of really strong offenses of the USA and Sweden. Russia did not deserve to lose!
Everyone knew about Podkolzin, who finally emerged to make a big contribution in the GMG, but some new stars, particularly Amirov, Groshev, and most of all, 16-year old Askarov, showed that they are forces for the future. The winning goal was kind of a fluke in the sense that Chistyakov had his stick knocked out of his hands, and for some reason decided not to take 2 or 3 seconds to go over and pick it up, and instead skated around aimlessly creating, in effect, a shorthanded situation. And if there is anything that Askarov needs to clean up, it is the tendency to go down to his knees all the time. Several times, Raymond took advantage of the opportunity to score an easy goal up high in the net.