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Olympics 2026 qualification

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Hungary 7 and Spain 3..

Romania 4 and Serbia 0.

Ukraine have a 2-0 lead in the second which is a surprise to me given the hodge podge of a team Ukraine have. The Koreans know each other very well despite having none of their imports.

GB and the Chinese Gents Team coming soon.
 
PanniniClaus said:
Ukraine have a 2-0 lead in the second which is a surprise to me given the hodge podge of a team Ukraine have. The Koreans know each other very well despite having none of their imports.
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What do you mean? Ukrainians brought all their best players and were considered to be heavy favorites against, finally, Dalton-less Korea.
 
SoundAndFury said:
What do you mean? Ukrainians brought all their best players and were considered to be heavy favorites against, finally, Dalton-less Korea.
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I just look at the variety of leagues they come from, many low level ones and spread all over the world. I figured it would be hard to mold them into something cohesive.

2-0 after 2. Shots 22-17 Korea
 
PanniniClaus said:
I just look at the variety of leagues they come from, many low level ones and spread all over the world. I figured it would be hard to mold them into something cohesive.

2-0 after 2. Shots 22-17 Korea
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Ukaine's top players: Merezhko, Peresunko, Lyalka have been good to great in the Slovak league which is the level of quality Korean players can only dream of. Especially, when they are surrounded by a decent supporting cast.

If we are looking towards the bottom of the roster sure Ukraine has players of pretty suspicious quality but at the same time, Korea brought a kid who barely manages to contribute anything at the NAHL level.
 
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I got pretty interested myself how did Korea take Ukraine to OT in the pre-tournament game and indeed they played without Merezhko, Peresunko, Cholach. Maybe also a few other guys who are less noticeable.
 
Well - Ukraine took care of business. I am good with that given the shit Ukrainians have gone through over the past 30 years..

Chinese beer leaguers get outshot 47 10 and lose 10-1.
 
Slightly surprised how badly Estonia is getting outplayed by Koreans. They have some significant losses, basically 3/4 top-4 D aren't there, but still, 11-32 SOG after 2 is BAD.
 
If the IIHF lets Belarus play, that could be a sneaky opponent for what would normally seem like an easy Slovakia Qualification (but if Russia is banned then I think Slovakia would move up to 8th and qualify automatically). They've been steadily improving the last decade and likely would have started to see some of the fruits of that at the senior level before the Ukraine invasion ban. They have a pretty respectable NHL/AHL/KHL/NCAA (Levshunov)/WHL (Sidorov) player base compared to 3 years ago, to put together a roster that can hang in there.
 
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Eye of Ra said:
who?
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Long list, but a few that come to mind are Maksymilian Szuber, Dziambor, Maciej Rutkowski, before them Adrian Grygiel, Wojciech Stachowiak, Aleksander Polaczek. Most recently very talented young player Patryk Zubek will become Slovakian. There are plenty more young players who live near Czech or Slovak border and play club hockey there who plan to declare for those nations.
 
Ukraine - Poland is a D1B team against Elite division team, in theory. In practice, if Poland loses, you can't even say they chocked or anything, these teams are very close in talent.
 
Rationalisations aside, I am pretty stunned. While the team ARE much closer than they would appear on the surface, that's still a pretty damn significant upset.

Losing promotion to Romania was the bigger throw though. Or the adventures of the Polish U20/U18 teams.
 
Ukraine just needs to win against Estonia who has two regulation losses, and is -6 to get through. They should be the lowest qualifier into the next round (the only teams ranked lower in this round are the ones that had to qualify from the prior round), which would put them in the Slovakia group, where Belarus would be if they aren't banned. Given the situation, Ukraine probably will refuse to play Belarus and IIHF will side with Ukraine, so that could force the hand to keep Belarus and more significantly, Russia, banned from the '26 Olympics.
 
SoundAndFury said:
Ukraine - Poland is a D1B team against Elite division team, in theory. In practice, if Poland loses, you can't even say they chocked or anything, these teams are very close in talent.
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Strange game. Poland played like they were out drinking until 6 am, 2nd and 3rd period they just seemed very slow, slugging, with little energy. On top of that Kalaber chose to go with Miarka in net instead of Zabolotny who just recorded a shutout. Add to that, poor power play execution and taking some stupid penalties, and game over.

Poland will most likely beat S. Korea Sunday, but I doubt Ukraine will lose to Estonia.
 
legionista said:
Long list, but a few that come to mind are Maksymilian Szuber, Dziambor, Maciej Rutkowski, before them Adrian Grygiel, Wojciech Stachowiak, Aleksander Polaczek. Most recently very talented young player Patryk Zubek will become Slovakian. There are plenty more young players who live near Czech or Slovak border and play club hockey there who plan to declare for those nations.
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Other than Zubek, how many of these played in Poland past the age of 12?
 
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Poland at home, lost to Ukraine.. that is not good. But props to Ukraine.. biggest result they have had in a very long time.
 
legionista said:
On top of that Kalaber chose to go with Miarka in net instead of Zabolotny who just recorded a shutout.
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Since it was a back-to-back game, the conventional logic was to play your other goalie if you have 2 at least somewhat usable ones. 6 out of 8 nations who played yesterday did this, and so did Ukrainians despite Zakharchenko also shutting out Korea the day before.
 
To add my two cents to the Polish NHLer discussion, if someone possesses NHL level of talent he really has no need to switch federations to further his career. It applies to a degree (EU laws, local player license etc. lessens its importance) to middling prospect playing in Europe but not the high-end prospects. Best Polish prospects (Macias, Lyszczarczyk) are dual-nationals and it's safe to say sticking to representing Poland hasn't hurt them in any way.

On the unrelated note, Hungarian group is playing 3 games in 3 days, that just seems unhealthy.
 
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legionista said:
Long list, but a few that come to mind are Maksymilian Szuber, Dziambor, Maciej Rutkowski, before them Adrian Grygiel, Wojciech Stachowiak, Aleksander Polaczek. Most recently very talented young player Patryk Zubek will become Slovakian. There are plenty more young players who live near Czech or Slovak border and play club hockey there who plan to declare for those nations.
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and the swedes? I can only think of Stefan Liv (RIP), but he was adopted as a kid by swedish parents
 
Just went on to imagine that if the Russia and Belarus ban would stay final qualification groups would be re-drawn. This is how I would see it. In this scenario, Slovakia goes straight to the Olympics as the eighth-best ranked team when Russia is removed from the ranking.

W = February group winners
RU = February group runner-ups (the best two will get a new chance.

Latvia
Austria
Slovenia
RU2

Denmark
Kazakhstan
W1
RU1

Norway
France
W2
W3
 
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Spain lose to Lithuania 2-0 but you have to give Spain credit... they mixed it up with everyone in the group and outshot Lithuania 32-21 today.

Mauricio Manzi (Canadian born, Italian International, is working hard to improve Spanish hockey. )

Japan and Hungary - after 2 it is 1-0 Hungary and they are outshooting Japan 25-13.

Romania 6 and China 1.

GB handling Serbia easily so we will see GB and Romania play a 1 off final tomorrow.
 
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