Exactly- you can even lose to Hungary, or even Poland, but do`not to Lithuania and don`t at home, for God's sake!!! Twenty years ago we were on level with Austria and Switzerland and where are we now?
However, defeats to Lithuania, or probably to Estonia, shouldn't have happened at home- if they had taken this tournament seriously, allowed their players to train at this hockey arena, etc. Secondly, Hungary, France and Austria, for example, have never lost to Lithuania in any age group. Do you ever remember that Slovakia losing to Lithuania in any age group in history?
And now we are, losing to rivals with a population the size of Milan? And with no hockey tradition whatsoever, like Slovakia or even Latvia. Another thing is that Ukraine, a country at war for four years, is beating us in most of the youth age groups lately and increasingly among the seniors. To me, these things are unimaginable.
Well, I doubt, anyone from U20 will be in the Olympics roster
Also, anyway in this age category every year is different one bad class does not reflect the program. I´ve heard the 2007 class will be quite good, definitely better than 2006 .
This is a common issue among second tier hockey nations, for obvious reason we do not have the pool of Canada or USA to have every year a top medal contender team, but time to time each of those nations have one good year which can bring great results.