The Associated Press
Jonah Bronstein
BUFFALO, N.Y.–The Slovakian skaters swarmed goalie Roman Durny to celebrate on the ice after upsetting the United States at the world junior hockey championship yesterday.
“It’s like winning a medal,” said forward Marian Studenic.
“It’s a big win for us,” he added. “We’re a small state and this is an honourable feeling.”
Samuel Bucek scored an unassisted goal with 2:08 to go to give Slovakia a 3-2 victory over the defending gold-medallist Americans.
“We never really thought we could beat a U.S.A.,” Bucek admitted.
“But we’ve done that because we’ve been playing really with patience and we stick with the process, and we did the right things on the ice.”
Filip Krivoski scored the other two goals for Slovakia while Durny made 43 saves in his world junior debut.
“Our goalie was outstanding,” Bucek said. “That was probably the main reason why we won tonight.”
Slovakia is 4-13-1 all-time against the U.S. in the world junior championship, and had lost six-straight preliminary-round meetings since last defeating the U.S. in a 2009 quarter-final.
Casey Mittlestadt and Brady Tkachuk scored for the U.S., which had won nine-straight world junior games entering the night.
The U.S. began its streak with the 2016 bronze-medal game, then went undefeated in winning the gold medal last year in Toronto.
The previous American record was eight-consecutive victories from 2004-05.
“You’ve got to realize the stage and realize that you’re playing the world juniors,” Mittlestadt said.
“You can’t take anyone for granted.”
The U.S. faced Canada in an outdoor game at the Buffalo Bills’ New Era Field this afternoon.
In other preliminary-round games yesterday, Sweden beat the Czech Republic 3-1, Russia pulled away in the third period for a 5-2 victory over Switzerland, and Finland defeated Denmark 4-1.
