This Belarus team is nowhere near as bad as Zakharov is making them look. But the result is what it is.
There is zero game plan besides sad 1-3-1 trapping, that subsequently leads to not being able to come up with anything offensively. Lines and squad rotations from game to game are nonsensical and horrible, Bailen and Pare are simply playing too much with net negative return. Platt also looks done and even Prince surprisingly looks absolutely ineffective. To put it mildly - all NA players have been disappointing with exception of maybe Taylor.
Not to put blame solely on naturalized players. Sharangovich is not a captain material at this point, there are so many childish moments to his tournament so far - from middle fingers to opposition bench to lazy penalties here or there. Took Zakharov long enough to finally bench the corpse of Sergei Kostitsyn - player that at this stage should be nowhere near the national team. Also how is Drozd still being played? He might be even worse than SK. I've called out his offensive ineptitude year after year, once he touches the puck that's a guarantee that there will be no goal within next two teammate touches. This is his 8th WC, he has 0+1 in 43 games - those are not great numbers for a goalie let alone a so called forward. Lets hope IIHF bans him for his today's terrible hit tot he head - his absence might improve the team.
Expected more going forward from Falkovsky, Belevich also hasnt impressed even though he has two solid KHL seasons behind his back. Protas is very young still and Im not gonna judge him, his size already is an asset. The best player so far has to be Kodola, none of the lines click, he has come back from injury very recently, but every time he has the puck I have a feeling like something positive might happen on ice and that's sadly already a lot this year.
If there was relegation this year, Belarus would be going down again by the looks of it.
On defense chairs would also need to be rearranged but that's less of a big deal.
