{"id":484158,"date":"2026-02-16T18:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/484158\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T18:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:39:07","slug":"czechia-opens-olympic-qualifying-round-looking-to-show-the-world-it-belongs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/484158\/","title":{"rendered":"Czechia opens Olympic qualifying round looking to ‘show the world’ it belongs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Czechs also feel they improved in each game.<\/p>\n

Canada rolled against them. That much was obvious. That game was never in doubt from the Canadian side.<\/p>\n

France gave Czechia a big scare, scoring three goals in the first 5:54 of the second period to lead 3-2. Czechia came back and carried a 4-3 lead into the second intermission before making it 6-3 less than two minutes into the third.<\/p>\n

The game against Switzerland was the Czechs’ best of the preliminary round. Back and forth all the way through, Martin Necas<\/a> scored to tie it 3-3 at 17:54 of the third before Dean Kukan<\/a> won it for the Swiss 1:49 into overtime.<\/p>\n

“What we said before (the tournament) is we should progress every game, we should be better and better and better, and that’s how I feel we’ve been doing,” goalie Lukas Dostal<\/a> said. “Obviously, Switzerland, you cannot sleep on them. They have a good team. They play a hard system. It’s always very close games against them. I had a chance to watch their game against Canada, and obviously in the end Canada outscored them, but I don’t think they played a bad game. They defended well, and it was the same thing against us. It was a tough game, but, obviously, it’s in the past now and we’re just focusing on Denmark.”<\/p>\n

Denmark will be a challenge.<\/p>\n

The Danes felt they were better against Team Germany in their first game, owning a 38-26 advantage in shots on goal in a 3-1 loss. They put a big scare into Team USA before losing 6-3, and they won 4-2 against Team Latvia, which defeated Germany 4-3.<\/p>\n

“Well, they’re a big, defensive, very physical team,” Gudas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Czechs also feel they improved in each game. Canada rolled against them. That much was obvious. That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-484158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}