That game, for the right to play for the gold medal, is Friday (3:10 p.m. ET; Peacock, NBC, ICI Tele, CBC Gem, CBC [JIP], TSN [JIP], RDS2).
“Thankfully he was all right,” Slovakia captain Tomas Tatar said. “We continued. We scored the goal. That spirit [shows]. It’s great. We wanted to stay concentrated. We didn’t want to get shaken up by hits. We wanted to be focused and I think we were.”
Milos Kelemen scored at 4:01, outworking defenseman Lukas Kalble for a dump-in and cutting to the slot before beating goalie Philipp Grubauer to make it 2-0. On the next shift, Oliver Okuliar was sent in alone on a quick transition. He held the puck until Grubauer opened his legs and then put it through the five-hole.
Slafkovsky, who scored three goals in the first three games of this tournament, loved it. The ice pack still on his neck, he was jumping up and down with teammates, going wild. He returned to the game and had an assist on Tatar’s empty-net goal for the 6-2 final.
“It was a great feeling,” Slafkovsky said. “That ice pack felt so good and then we got two goals. I will try to do it again, but I won’t try to hit my head, but I’ll try the ice pack.”
So much of this tournament for Slovakia has been about Slafkovsky, a rising star with the Montreal Canadiens. The 21-year-old is already the face of the team, with a team-high seven points (three goals, four assists). He scored seven goals in seven games at the 2022 Beijing Olympics and was named most valuable player after helping Slovakia win bronze, the country’s first medal in men’s hockey.