No Mercy

Bulgarian fan at an olympic qualifier in 2008. Hat tip to Puck Daddy for the picture.

In the first game of women's ice hockey in the 2010 Vancouver olympics, Canada destroyed Slovakia by a score of 18-0. That's a goal every 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Pretty brutal, eh FORDO?!?!? Canada has taken a lot of heat for embarrassing the women of Slovakia. When I saw the score I was like "wow, what a bunch of arthouse goons, it's a shame they'd do that to a team".

But then to my dismay, I became aware of Slovakia being on the other end of a thorough bombing in the Olympic qualifiers on September 6th, 2008. Slovakia came out flat, but was able to hold off Bulgaria by a score of 82-0.

Not a typo. In front of a crowd of 37, the final score of the game was literally 82-0. That's a goal every 44 seconds by the Slovaks.

Slovakia started out slow, not scoring until the 57-second mark, and only leading 7-0 after 5 minutes of play. Lucky for them, they scored 12 goals in the next 5 minutes to take a 19-0 lead to the midway point of the first period. They cooled off again, and finished the 3rd period with a very surmountable 31-0 lead. The 2nd period started with a tough battle, as the next goal would be a big one. Luckily it only took 34 seconds for the Slovaks to bury again. By the end of the 2nd period, Slovakia held a 55-0 lead. Making sure to avoid Bulgaria making any miracles happen, Slovakia continued to pour it on in the 3rd. Finally, with 3 minutes left to play, Slovakia scored its 77th goal, at which point Bulgaria gave up, deciding it would be pretty hard to score 77 goals in 3 minutes, so they put their backup goaltender in. The backup had a rough time, allowing all 5 shots she faced to go in. Final score: 82-0.

Bulgaria's starting goaltender did have a pretty admirable performance, making 57 saves. The final shots were 139-0 in favor of Slovakia.

I pulled up the box score and found some interesting tidbits. Here are the stats for the Slovakian players:

Player G A PTS

M. Herichova 8 10 18

J. Culikova 10 7 17

M. Velickova 9 8 17

N. Celarova 8 9 17

P. Dankova 4 12 16

A. Dzurnakova 3 11 14

N. Gapova 8 4 12

L. Srokova 5 7 12

R. Vargova 8 3 11

I. Karafiatova 6 5 11

Z. Moravcikova 6 4 10

J. Kapustova 5 4 9

B. Bremova 1 7 8
V. Konecna 1 2 3

P. Orszaghova 0 2 2

E. Rakova 0 0 0

12 hat tricks, 4 8-goal scorers, 1 9-goal scorer, 1 10-goal scorer, 11 double-digit point getters. My only question is WHAT THE FUCK was E. Rakova doing? How did she not accidentally get a puck shot off her and in. There were 82 goals. You're telling me she couldn't get a single point? The 2 names above her had weak performances too.

On the Bulgaria side, defenseman Alisa Peneva will be getting some looks from some good teams, as she led the team with a +/- of -34. Not even Rico Fata can accomplish that. Forwards Maria Ivanova and Olga Gospodinova really need to work on their defense a bit, as each were -39.

It's hard to believe that this could happen in a real actual game. I don't even think the NHL all-stars would beat W&J that bad. I'd like to think we could get at least one shot.

The worst part is, this isn't even the worst deficit ever recorded. In a U18 tournament back in 1998, South Korea defeated Thailand 92-0. UNREAL.

I wonder how long the babe in the picture above stayed at the game.