I was rooting for Latvia, but they're just so terrible in the offensive zone. They're good defensively and have a few players that look good and are obviously skilled enough to thrive in good leagues (WHL, USHL, Swiss U20, etc.); yet they they struggle to get shots through traffic, play the perimeter a lot despite being so big, struggle to hold the line well, and can't get shots off fast enough.
Is it just a coaching thing or what?
It's both coaching, the system employed and the very basic fact that this Latvian team is lacking top notch elite talent, e.g., 1st round picks.
But another important thing to note is that, probabilistically, the expected goals scored over these two last games was significantly higher than 0. Yet we had 60 shots on goal, 0 goals scored.
The quality, distance from goal, etc., were below average, but purely from a statistical analysis point of view, this was dictated purely by chance.
Or, to dumb it down, they were very unlucky and in most cases would have scored 3 goals or more vs. Finland/Slovakia combined.