Slovakia Rallies Past Slovenia at 2015 World Championships

The third period saw Slovakia’s head coach Vladimir Vujtek leave captain Tomas Kopecky on the bench throughout – he later said “Tomas is a team player and knows there will be some changes when the team is not succeeding” – and the bold decision paid off.

Once again it was Meszaros time. The Buffalo Sabres D-man had never scored for Slovakia before Sunday’s fightback against Belarus – now he has three goals, and all of them were vital. Here he leveled it up on the power play, unleashing a thunderous shot from the blue line to finally end Kristan’s resistance. With 12 minutes to play the noise levels in the arena were turned up to 11 as another sell-out Slovak crowd scented another great escape in the making.

“We’re playing with fire in these games but we know we’ll have to play better because there’s another great opponent waiting for us tomorrow,” said Meszaros after the game. “But our guys deserve kudos for the way we kept doing the right thing, we stuck to the system, fought hard and in the end we won a big three points.”