Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak helped Team Slovakia to a fourth-place finish at this year\u2019s 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, a journey that ended with a 6-1 loss to Finland in the bronze medal game on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Aho found the lone goal of the first period to make it 1-0 Finland, burying a loose puck in the crease just before the game\u2019s eighth minute.<\/p>\n
Erik Haula doubled the lead with a shot from the top of the right circle eight minutes into the second period, but Slovakia got on the scoreboard with captain Tomas Tatar\u2019s backhand finish that made it 2-1 with 30 seconds left in the middle frame.<\/p>\n
A power-play redirection from forward Roope Hintz and another goal from Kaapo Kakko extended Finland\u2019s lead in the third period before two empty-net goals sealed the final score.<\/p>\n
Cernak played just under 17 minutes for Slovakia on Saturday and finished his Olympics with an assist and 14 penalty minutes in six games while serving as an alternate captain.<\/p>\n
Scoring Summary<\/p>\n
First period<\/p>\n
FIN 1, SVK 0<\/p>\n
7:27 Sebastian Aho (4) – Artturi Lehkonen, Miro Heiskanen<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: FIN 10, SVK 6<\/p>\n
Second period<\/p>\n
FIN 2, SVK 0<\/p>\n
8:05 Erik Haula (2) – Joel Armia, Eeli Tolvanen<\/p>\n
FIN 2, SVK 1<\/p>\n
19:30 Tomas Tatar (2) – Martin Fehervary<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: SVK 15, FIN 12<\/p>\n
Third period<\/p>\n
FIN 3, SVK 1<\/p>\n
8:27 Roope Hintz (1) – Heiskanen, Tolvanen – PP<\/p>\n
FIN 4, SVK 1<\/p>\n
9:09 Kaapo Kakko (3) – Unassisted<\/p>\n
FIN 5, SVK 1<\/p>\n
15:32 Joel Armia (3) – Hintz – EN<\/p>\n
FIN 6, SVK 1<\/p>\n
18:42 Haula (3) – Armia, Rasmus Ristolainen – EN<\/p>\n
Total shots: FIN 35, SVK 31<\/p>\n
TBL Player Summary<\/p>\n
Erik Cernak (SVK): 16:55 TOI, 1 SOG.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s Next?<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s hockey tournament closes at the 2026 Winter Olympics with Sunday\u2019s 8 a.m. gold medal game between Team Canada and Team USA, when Lightning coach Jon Cooper and forward Brandon Hagel will represent Canada against American teammate Jake Guentzel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak helped Team Slovakia to a fourth-place finish at this year\u2019s 2026 Winter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-164203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}