Gunner Dominik Kubalík put an end to the shooting troubles of the Czech hockey players in the match against Slovenia with a goal to make it 1:2 in the 39th minute at the World Championship in Riga, and in the end contributed to the 6:2 win over the outsider with four points for a hat trick and one assist.
The 27-year-old forward from Detroit confirmed his excellent form and dominates the statistics of the tournament with six goals and ten points. He beat goalkeeper Luka Gračnar for the first time in a power play with a shot from the right circle and praised the importance of this goal.
“He helped us tremendously, he gave us confidence that we finally broke through. I felt myself that from now on it would finally work. Suddenly we started driving, we helped each other and we were able to outplay them. In the third period it was already us, Kubalík said in an interview with journalists.
The Czechs lost the first period 0:2 and, according to Kubalík, the team did not play what it should have. “It wasn’t that it couldn’t be done. We didn’t do the things we were supposed to do at all. The legs didn’t work, we couldn’t help ourselves. But everything starts from the fights, which should be the alpha and omega of every performance. When we go to fifty percent, we can’t win. In the World Cup, there’s no team that can beat itself. I don’t want to say we were lax and we didn’t want to, but I admit it felt that way. Even though I think we went into the game with all our might, it wasn’t to see,” he looked for the reasons for the failure of a large part of the match.
He scored for the second time in the match in the 44th minute in a power play, again from the right circle. In total, he scored four goals in overtime matches at the tournament and is confident. “But one shot on the ice between the legs, the other on the ice next to the concrete. If they were covers, like the one Ovechkin puts there, it would have been something else. Today it was enough with luck. But I take all the goals and I’m happy that power plays work for us and we were able to rely on them,” Kubalík said.
He scored the second hat-trick in his international career. He scored the first in November 2011 at the Karjala tournament in Helsinki in a 5:2 win over Russia. He has no idea if he will pay into the team coffers for him. “I don’t know at all, but I probably won’t get away with it. But that’s the last thing I’m interested in right now. Of course, a hat-trick will please me, I haven’t scored many in my career, but above all I’m very happy for the win,” said Kubalík.
In the first attack with captain Roman Červenko, they gradually lost the injured Filip Chytil and Lukáš Sedlák at the center of the tournament, today they started with Michael Špaček and Vladimír Sobotka joined them from the third period. “We are looking for a suitable connection. It wasn’t bad with Špagre, but it needed some impetus, which came in the third period with Vláďa. It benefited us, suddenly it started to work,” said Kubalík.
And the performance from the beginning of the match against Slovenia is taken as a warning for the next course. “There is no such thing as repeating the performance from the first period at the championship. It’s simply not possible. We’ll learn from it. But there were enough things we should have learned from in the tournament,” he said, recalling Monday’s 3:4 defeat to Latvia in extension.
With the bad luck with injuries that accompanies the Czech team at the tournament, he hopes that there will be no more. He was numb after a puck hit the leg by forward Jiří Smejkal and also when defender Michal Jordán’s knee was badly bent at the end in a duel near the goal post. “Especially in the situation we’re in, I don’t like to see things like that. I hope they’ll both be fine. They’re great fighters who can withstand anything,” Kubalík added.
