International Ice Hockey Federation

Ukraine finishes fourth

Ukraine finishes fourth

Host Korea ends tournament winless

Published 26.04.2014 23:47 GMT+9 | Author Martin Merk
Ukraine finishes fourth
The Ukrainian players celebrate a goal in their 8-2 win against Korea. Photo: Soohan Kim
Ukraine defeated host Korea 8-2 for the second win at the tournament and a fourth-place finish for the promoted team.

“It was a good game. We tried to play really well defensively and moved the puck very well,” Ukraine coach Andrei Nazarov said.

Korea meanwhile ended the 2014 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group A on home ice winless after a fifth-place finish with two victories one year ago in Budapest.

“It was the worst game they played. We played better before. There was lot of pressure here on the players but the other teams are good teams. Maybe the pressure of playing at home was a reason why we our players didn’t perform that well,” said Korean head coach Sun Wook Byun. “We tried to do the best and there’s a lot of things we have to learn from here and to improve to be ready for PyeongChang 2018.”

Korea wasn’t the most efficient team in scoring in the tournament and the first period wasn’t an exception. While the Koreans outshot Ukraine 12-10 in the first frame, it was the Ukrainians who scored the only two goals.

At 2:27 Denys Isayenko opened the scoring with a distance shot into the top-left corner and three minutes later Olexander Materukhin doubled the lead.

Soon after the second period had started the Ukrainians had another power play and once it was over they scored. After three minutes in the middle frame Roman Blagy was skating from behind around the crease before sending off a shot that beat Sungje Park for the 3-0 goal. Late in the period Denys Petrukhno and Oleg Shafarenko extended the lead to 5-0 to end a strong period for the yellow-and-blue team.

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Materukhin took care of the 6-0 goal 87 seconds into the third period. While being interfered, he shot the puck in before falling into the cage as well.

Hyung Joon Kim scored Korea’s first goal on a quick attack after a centring pass from Jun Il Chang at 6:34 and prompted a quick Ukrainian reaction with goals from Olexander Toryanik and Roman Blagy. A Korean power-play goal from Brock Radunske ended the goal galore with the final score of 8-2.

 

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