Data Analysis: Czechia vs Switzerland 2-4 – 11.12.2018

15 hours was between the final moments of Saturday´s semifinal and pre-game of Sunday´s bronze game for Switzerland. Swiss team had to soak in their penalty shoot out loss and battle again against Czechia. They scored in the 9th minute by Känzig, led most of the game and stood as the winners after the final whistle. Disappointing must be the result for Czech team after their display in the game to win bronze.

Back to the first period though. Czech team looked ready and had their chances and despite its 6-4 advantage on dangerous possessions the score was 1-2.

Graph guides us through the game showing dangerous possessions that consist of clear path situations and odd man rushes in each period. Again in the second period it was Czech team creating more with 7-4 differential in dangerous possessions. Especially these odd man rushes were executed not ideally. Look at this 4 on 2 situation as an example.

At the same time Switzerland was again pressuring high and trying to play quick if they could. Czechs could not solve goalkeeper Meier on many occasions and he managed to support his team´s offence at the same time. In the next gif after his save Meier throws the ball to Maurer who one touches it to Meier for a grade A chance.

Surprisingly there was no goal scored from odd man rushes in the game despite 14 situations created. Another paradox happened with turnover possessions.

Graph shows that Czech team had a solid advantage in turnover possessions with 6-1 score. From these 3-1 possessions were highlighted by clear path situation. The score from turnovers? 0-1 for team Switzerland. To summarize when your team creates 8 odd man rushes, yields 6 turnovers and still scores zero goals from them you can freely say “this is not my day”.

Offensively it was all team effort for Czech team as we can first observe players according to their numbers of shot attempts and shot attempt assists at even strength.

Maurer for Switzerland and defender Prazan for Czechia were the most frequent finishers in the game. Prazan assisted 7 times on shot attempts and only Braillard was close to him with 6 assists. In shooter axis it was Riedi for Switzerland and Ondrusek for Czech team with the most 6 shot attempts. Overall almost all players had shot attempts or at least assist in the game.

Similarly for Czech team it was all lines creating advantage in dangerous possessions as seen in the last graph.

First line (Nemecek, Kisugite, Sebek, Jendrisak and Curney for some parts of the game) was the one for Czechs with more defensively oriented style and was very solid in preventing danger against. Other Czech lines created more offence, at the same time were victimized few times defensively. The best results for team Switzerland can be assigned to first line in this game (Bischofberger, Heller, Mendelin, Meier, Maurer) who ended in positive (4 possessions for and 3 against) side of the graph.

By Petr Malina