What has driven Czechia’s success at the World Juniors?

Czechia continues to haunt Canadians, as they ended Canada’s hopes for gold sooner than anticipated for the third straight tournament in a thrilling 6-4 semifinal win on Sunday. Now Czechia has an opportunity to win their first gold medal since 2001 with a win over Sweden on Monday.

But how has Czechia managed to be so successful at the World Juniors this year? Steven Ellis joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about the Czechs and why they’ve surprised everyone at this tournament.

Steven Ellis: This is a team that really plays Canada hard. They showed some questionable signs during the tournament that maybe they needed a bit more from all their offense, and that their goaltending could be a bit of an issue. But in the playoffs, the Czechs have just been purely dominant. They’re a hardworking team.

I have to vote in the next little bit on who the MVP of the tournament is and the best players in every position, and deciding whether it’s going to be Adam Jiricek as MVP or Tomas Galvas as MVP, let alone who’s going to be the top defenseman, just shows you that this team is built to win right now.

And watching Orsulak last night, he’s a guy that’s had some really good games in the WHL this year. Maybe not the greatest numbers and maybe not the guy that you would expect. Because, to be clear about Czechia, that was not their number one goalie heading into the tournament. Their number one goalie got injured earlier in the year. Jakub Milota wasn’t able to play.

So I think, when you look at that, the fact that they’ve been able to just get buy-in from everybody, and they’ve been playing so well, really shows how good of a group this is. And I said before tournament, this could be the best Czech team ever. And it’s hard to disagree at this point. They are going to be running into a Swedish team that looks very strong, but the Czechs came to play.

They’ve got a ton of talent. They only have one forward that’s a first-round pick this year so far, and that’s Nestrasil, the Chicago Blackhawks prospect. He’s six-foot-six. You notice him every single game because he’s huge. But he’s also creating opportunities. A very good skater.

But they’re not deep like Canada. They don’t have 18-19 first-round players. They had to go out there and beat teams through just their hard work, their defensive play and their two way ability. And we’ve seen what they’ve been able to do.

You can watch the full episode here…