Czech Republic Wins Title Again

By beating up on a neighbor, the Czech Republic asserted its superiority over the world’s hockey elite.

The Czechs won their second consecutive World Hockey Championship by defeating Slovakia, 5-3, Sunday in the gold medal game. Finland took the bronze medal with a 2-1 victory over Canada.

“It’s always nice to play them and know we’re on top,” said Jiri Dopita, a member of the Czech gold-medal winning team at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. “We showed them we have a little bit better hockey players. We showed them tonight.”

After winning at the Olympics, this victory gave the Czechs consecutive World Championship crowns for the first time since 1991-92.

The loss, however, was frustrating for Slovakia, which has never defeated the Czechs in world championship play since it began competing as an independent country in 1996 and had hoped to use the final to finally defeat the bigger nation.

Simply making it to the final though was still a remarkable accomplishment for the Slovaks, whose previous best results were a pair of seventh places the last two years.

The Czechs took a 3-0 first-period lead as Michal Sykora, Tomas Vlasak and Martin Prochazka beat goalie Jan Lasak, a member of the Nashville Predators.

Martin Strbak scored Slovakia’s first goal at 7:43 of the second period, but Jan Tomajko restored the three-goal lead 3:35 into the final period.

Slovakia, however, made a late charge. Miroslav Hlinka scored at 15:22 and, a little more than two minutes later, Miroslav Satan of the Buffalo Sabres, with his 10th goal of the tournament, pulled Slovakia to 4-3.

Robert Reichel, who had consecutive 40-goal seasons with the Calgary Flames from 1992-94, added an insurance goal in the final minute.

Earlier, Marko Tuomainen of the Kings scored the winning goal as Finland edged Canada in the bronze medal game.

“The bronze game is always two disappointed teams,” Finland forward Tomi Kallio said. “If you can’t win the gold medal you win the bronze. The team that wants it a little bit more wins. And we wanted the bronze more than Canada.”