Canada Moves On

Canada's far superior skill, speed, and strength helped them to win the series against Switzerland, but costly mistakes and over agressiveness played a large part in Switzerland losing the series. Whichever way you want to look at it, the number 1 seed in the tournament cruised their way into the semi-finals with 2 straight victories.

The 4-0 score in the first game could've been a much closer 1-0 had it not been for two key errors. The first goal of the game came when Swiss goalie, Jonas Hiller made an easy save, but dumped the puck back out into traffic. The Canadian team promptly jumped on the loose puck and Dany Heatley put the puck into the net.

"I needed to be perfect and I failed", were Hiller's only words before shuffing out of the arena.

The second key error came in the third when Swiss forward, Martin Pluss, was called for a game misconduct after slashing Canadian, Ducan Keith. Pluss was given a 5 minute major during which Canada scored 2 goals. Keith sat out much of the second half of the game with an apparently wrist injury but seems to be ok now.

"That call was horse!@#$", exclaimed an angry and unapologetic Pluss. "The refs were against us from the start. They don't want Switzerland winning. They want Canada. Did you see the call on Staal? Given a breakway when we had a #$%#ing defender right in front of him??? $#@@." There is no official news yet, but there are rumors of heavy fines and even bans directed at Pluss for his comments and actions.

The ironic thing is Switzerland looked their best during Pluss's major. They were able to rattle off several shots on Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo and even killed off 2 full minutes of 5 on 3. But their agressive approach meant that the Canadians had plenty of scoring chances once they managed to get the puck moving back the other way.

Switzerland carried their agressiveness into the second game, but they overdid it a little bit and took several bad penalties. Both Canadian goals in their 2-1 victory were scored on the power play. The Swiss, lead once again by Martin Pluss, racked up the penalty minutes and while they managed to tie the game at 1, they were too consistantly shorthanded to make a second comeback.