Jozef Stumpel recorded three points as Slovakia dominated Latvia 6-0 in men’s Olympic hockey on Saturday.
Stumpel assisted on the first goal of the game on a power play when he fed a one-timer to Lubomir Visnovsky, who hammered the puck in from the blue-line less than three minutes into the game.
The former NHL player’s second point came late in the first period with a one-timed shot of his own from the middle of the right circle, set up by Zigmund Palffy.
The third point for the Slovakian (1-1-1-0) centre came with a little over a minute past in the second period when he was able to assist on a Marian Hossa power-play goal by dekeing out a Latvian (0-3-0-0) defender, then sliding the puck over to Hossa for an easy score.
All six goals were scored by different players.
Richard Zednik scored the second goal of the game midway through the first period, Michal Handzus was able to make the score 5-0 only 53 seconds after the Hossa goal, and Ivan Baranka got the sixth goal with close to 2 ½ minutes left to play in the game.
Latvian goaltender Edgars Misalskis was busy all game long, seeing 37 shots come his way, and stopping 31 of them.
His Slovakian counterpart, Jaroslav Halak, was not as heavily tested, making saves on all 21 shots he faced for the shutout.
Slovakia’s power play was successful after struggling a little over the previous two games going 2-for-3.
Latvia was unable to capitalize on the four chances they had on the power play.
This is the last game for both of these teams in the preliminary round. Their next games will be played next week as the tournament will progress to the playoff qualification round where it will enter a single elimination format.