Bosnia - Hong Kong [0-5 Forfeit]
Today was your bye day, Hong Kong. You better have used this as a training day or you'll be beaten by double-digits by Bulgaria tomorrow unless you've seriously picked up from the crapshow that was 2016. May God have mercy on your souls.
Luxembourg - United Arab Emirates [17-0]
What the hell happened to you, UAE? You were supposed to be the next emerging hockey power in Asia and then had an anomaly of a bad year since more than half of your team had to do their compulsory military service. Those players are back now, and Luxembourg is not favored to win a medal at all, so there's zero excuse for losing by this kind of scoreline. Luxembourg is a team where a 47-year-old expat from Slovakia who has an adult son also playing for the team qualifies as a first line center... and he scored 7P on you, as did a British expat who came to Luxembourg because he was bored with being an average player in England's amateur leagues. For the record, Luxembourg's biggest club team, Tornado Luxembourg, plays in the 4th tier of the French system.
South Africa - Georgia [5-6]
So I guess Georgia was able to keep some of their Russian snipers after their disqualification last year due to player eligibility issues, because they managed to win against my early pick to win the gold medal despite being completely crapped on in terms of shots on goal (34-19 in favor of South Africa). And yes, Georgia's goalscorers were all either ethnic Russians or Georgian-Russian dual nationals. Either these guys are the best forwards in the entire tournament, or Saffie goalie Charl Pretorius (who has the most stereotypical Boer name I've ever heard) is just hot garbage, and a 87.3 Save% in NCAA Division 3 as a backup goalie does not help his case.
Bulgaria - Taiwan [3-0]
I have a mixed opinion about Taiwan's debut in IIHF D3 today. On the scoreboard, they gave Bulgaria (the host nation and a medal favorite) a pretty decent fight today. On the other hand, the shots on goal statistic from the game makes me absolutely cringe: Bulgaria outshot them 55-7, and 6 of Taiwan's shots were in the first period, most likely due to an extended 2-man powerplay. Taiwan had better hope that their turbo-manlet 5'7" goalie carries them like this throughout the entire tournament, because I'm not expecting that offense to score on anyone except maybe Hong Kong and the UAE. |