Five Thoughts: Czechia After Three

Playing to a 5-0 loss against Team Canada on Sunday afternoon, Team Czechia was shut out in their second straight game at the 2024 Women’s World Championship. What happened, and how does Czechia move on to their game against Switzerland on Tuesday?

The Damage

Ouch. Two straight shutouts is hard for any team in any league, but for a team with such high aspirations at this level? It will take a lot of work from the leaders in that room like captain Aneta Tejralová to keep the team focused and confident in their abilities moving forward.

These round robin games affect seeding in the knockout round, but for Group A teams, they are not essential to tournament completion alone. The goal should be to identify the lessons that can be taken from this game and put it in the rearview mirror.

What Went Wrong?

It’s easier to list things that went wrong in this game than things that went right. While Team USA seemed to draw Czechia up to their level of physicality and speed, the Canadians just outplayed them along pretty much every angle, and they did it without taking penalties the way the US did. Czechia found it hard to even get out of their zone as Canada beat them to every puck, won every little battle, and basically played their game exactly the way they wanted to. None of the disruptive elements Czechia utilized against the US were present in this game.

Net Front Presence

All of Canada’s goals were the result of players getting to the front of Klára Peslarová’s crease and either taking away her eyes or putting the puck where they wanted it to go.

Canada identified that shots from in close were the way to go against a goaltender of Peslarová’s caliber and they executed that plan. Czechia’s defenders got muscled away or beat to pucks in front of the net. That will have to be a big topic to address.

Penalties

None of Canada’s goals came on the power play, but one came with an extra attacker on the ice. Including the penalty that resulted in that goal, Czechia took five penalties during the game. That cannot happen against a team that Czechia is struggling to match up to at even-strength. It’s a testament to the penalty killers that they were able to keep any goals from being scored when they had the disadvantage, but that type of special teams work tires out your skaters and shifts momentum to the other team. I won’t say all of those penalties were absolutely obvious calls, to be fair. That’s another thing the team will have to be aware of later in the tournament.

Shot Disparity

Perhaps this is closing the barn doors once the horses have escaped, but the shot count of this game was 42-13 in favor of Canada. Ann-Renée Desbiens faced very little in the way of a challenge. In the first period, Czechia had all of two shots on net. In most games, I would say that at a certain point you just have to start putting the puck on net, even low-quality chances, because you’re not going to get a goal without shooting and something is better than nothing. Czechia managed this in the game against the US. However, I can’t say that for this game because Canada simply did such a good job of smothering any Czech setup in the Canadian zone.

Bonus Thought: A Win!

The General Manager of the Czech senior team, Tereza Sadilová, was elected to the IIHF Women’s Committee. Sadilová has played a huge part in the success of the Czech program in recent years, starting with the team at the same time as Carla MacLeod in the 2021-2022 season.