It was good on Wednesday. Slafkovsky was a reason for the brilliance and a key cog in the ability of Slovakia (1-0-0-0) to defeat Finland for the first time in four Olympic meetings.<\/p>\n
Eeli Tolvanen<\/a> scored for Finland (0-0-1-0), and Juuse Saros<\/a> made 21 saves.<\/p>\n Slafkovsky, a forward for the Montreal Canadiens, scored the opening goal of the game, turning a turnover by Finland defenseman Mikko Lehtonen<\/a> into a brilliant solo effort, curling around Saros and tucking the puck into the unguarded net at 7:45 of the first period.<\/p>\n After Dalibor Dvorsky<\/a> made it 2-1 early in the third period, Slafkovsky gave the Slovaks some breathing room with his power-play goal at 10:30. He assisted on the empty-net goal by Adam Ruzicka<\/a> at 17:39 that made it 4-1.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe [I would score twice], but I am happy that it is like this and I am able to help my country and help my friends out there that are trying to win the game,\u201d Slafkovsky said.<\/p>\n The two-goal performance came after Slafkovsky scored seven goals in seven games at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when Slovakia won the bronze medal.<\/p>\n He was named MVP of the tournament and was then selected with the No. 1 pick by the Canadiens in the 2022 NHL Draft four months later.<\/p>\n Slafkovsky has nine goals in eight Olympic games. Slovakia faces Team Italy at Rho Arena on Friday (6:10 a.m. ET; Peacock, ICI T\u00e9l\u00e9, CBC Gem, SN).<\/p>\n \u201cI wish I could have two goals every game, but sometimes it is not going to happen,\u201d he said. \u201cI was in a good spot at a good time, and I was shooting the puck.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a great feeling. It gives a huge confidence boost, but we have to rest and do it again on Friday. But it for sure feels nice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was good on Wednesday. Slafkovsky was a reason for the brilliance and a key cog in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-469071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}