Denmark powered their way to a 3-2 win this morning over the Czech Republic. This is the Danish National Women’s Hockey Team’s first Olympic appearance and I’d say they’ve done pretty well for themselves so far.
They lost their first 2 games of the Olympics, 1-3 to China on the 4th and 6-2 to Japan on the 5th. They came close to winning their first game against China but China ended up scoring two last-minute goals to win that one. At the time they had played Japan, no one had beat Japan yet in the 2022 Winter Games — China just did that yesterday morning in a 2-1 shootout final.
Now, this Danish team has flipped the script and beat the Czech Republic’s national team, who are currently 2nd in Group B, in a very heated game. The first two periods ended tied up both times, 1-1 after the first, and 2-2 after the second. And both periods were full of power struggles between the two teams but neither could pull away with a substantial lead at the end of those 20 minutes.
The real hero of this game was Silke Lave Glud, the 25-year-old Danish defender/forward. She had a perfect one-timer to collect the GWG just 49 seconds into the third with the Danes on a power play:
Denmark kept the Czechs out of the net for the rest of the game, winning their first game 3-2. This is not just the Danish Women’s Hockey Team’s first win of this Olympics, it’s their first at any Olympics. This is literally history in the making:
Over the past few years, Denmark has really grown women’s hockey in their home country. In 2014, they had just 406 players registered with the IIHF and in 2020 they were up to 702. This is their first every Olympics and perhaps the start of a big women’s hockey boom over in Denmark. Young Danish kids can now see people from the same towns as them coming up and playing on the national stage, so why can’t they? It’s perfect for the growth of hockey. And sure, they haven’t absolutely smashed every competitor but they held off two of their biggest ones and just beat the other. In their first Olympics! I’m happy for the Danes and I hope they keep it going against Sweden tomorrow morning in their final prelim game. That game will be at 7:10AM CT on February 8th. I’ll do my best to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to bring you the latest. Go Denmark!
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