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Winter Olympics Sochi 2014: Ondrej Pavelec solid in Olympic debut

Ondrej Pavelec’s much anticipated debut at the 2014 Sochi Olympics was a A Tale of Two Goalies. In all truth, it most literarlly was the best of times and the blurst of times.

Oh, there were blursts alright, as evidenced by Pavelec's positioning on Latvia's second goal of the game displayed below.

Ohpavs_medium

Mmmmm, terrible.

The Jakub Kovar experiment will suffer the same fate as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster — doomed to fade into the Sochi mist, never to be seen again.

Nevertheless, Pavelec didn't let this one minor display of poor goaltending break his stride as he led the Czechs to a 4-2 win over Latvia. He made eighteen saves for an even .900 save percentage.

In the win over the Latvians, Pavelec managed to achieve what his previous placeholder couldn’t: make routine saves. Suffice to say the Jakub Kovar experiment will suffer the same fate as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster — doomed to fade into the Sochi mist, never to be seen again.

Pavelec and his Czech teammates are back at it tomorrow when they will close out the Preliminary portion of their schedule against Switzerland, where it’s assumed he will make his second consecutive start. But hey, Czech management left Jiri Hudler and Radim Vrbata back in North America choosing instead to employ an AARP collecting Petr Nedved.

Expect the unexpected.

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