Surprise Slovenian victory over Slovakia wasn't a fluke

Hockey is a weird game governed by bounces. Sometimes a puck at the goal mouth just caroms off of a skate, or ricochets off of the boards in odd manner and into the slot. Often times a game that was in fact lopsided in one direction is won by the team that played worse hockey.

That wasn't the case Saturday as the Slovenian men's hockey team managed the first Olympic win in the small landlocked nation's history. Slovenia deserved to beat Slovakia, and was every bit an equal foe.

Slovenia's only NHL player, Los Angeles Kings forward Anze Kopitar, didn't contribute much offensively in Slovenia's first game of the tournament, but had a big day on Saturday against Slovakia. Kopitar scored a goal while playing nearly 27 minutes and winning 15 of 20 faceoffs he took. It's rare that you see a first-line forward dominate that way when matched up against Slovakia's captain, Zdeno Chara.

More impressive than Kopitar's performance was the play of the Slovenian side as a whole. Facing a team with 13 NHL players, the Slovenians won the chance battle and carried play throughout. Slovenia even won the scoring chance battle and recorded 10 quality looks with the score tied while permitting only six against.

Obviously this augers poorly for a Slovakian side that was expected to be competent at this tournament. 

Slovakia gave Canada a serious scare at the 2010 Olympics and was a third-period collapse against Finland away from winning a bronze medal. At this tournament, Slovakia is without key pieces like Lubomir Visnovsky and Marian Gaborik, which hurts. But they've now lost their first two games and are facing a tough opponent in the host Russian side on Sunday. 

Slovakia is now in serious danger of leaving the Olympics without winning a game, which few expected before the tournament began.

Scoring Chances

Note: a scoring chance is counted any time a team directs a shot cleanly on-net from within the area where the most goals go in - between and below the circles. You can get a handle on what the scoring chance area looks like here. Shots on goal and misses are counted, but blocked shots are not (unless the player who blocks the shot is “acting like a goaltender”). Generally speaking, we are more generous with the boundaries of the scoring chance area if there is dangerous puck movement immediately preceding the scoring chance, or if the scoring chance is screened. Tip shots are only counted if they're obvious sets. 

Here is what the Slovakian skaters contributed in terms of scoring chances on Saturday:

Marian Hossa led the Slovakians offensively on Saturday, and the next generation of players in Tomas Tatar and Tomas Jurco were generally effective. Beyond those three talented wingers, however, Slovakia didn't receive much from the rest of its lineup. 

Here are the individual scoring chance numbers for Slovenia:

Kopitar had a huge game while soaking up the difficult minutes against Chara. That left Thursday's hero Ziga Jeglic free to wreck havoc against Slovakia's significantly less formidable depth defenders. Jan Urbas has also had a strong tournament. 

Here are the team totals:

It'll be interesting to see how Slovenia - which hung tough against Russia and legitimately outplayed Slovakia - fares against the United States on Sunday. Presumably it'll get blown out, though most would have said that (and been incorrect) about the first two games Slovenia has played so far.