Alexey Morozov, full of awesomenss
Teams have now played 2 games, and the "top" countries (Russia, Canada, Sweden, Czech, Finland and USA if you must) have faced so called weaker teams. While these games don't give full picture of the ability to win, they do give a valid information whether the teams have mental issues ie. arrogance, inability to focus full 60 minutes and a tend to play as individuals rather than a team.
Canada has passed this test with 1-6 win over Belarus and 9-0 massacre known as CAN - HUN. They played well, focused on the game (mostly) and didn't give any chances to opponents. Their next victim will be Slovakia, a country with one championship and one foot in top country club but lately spend more time qualifying to stay in A division. Without Chara, Hossa (the better one, sorry Marcel) and Satan the team isn't in medal shape but they should do better than they've done this far.
Then there's Russia, a team with great talents who occasionally start to play as individuals, especially if being frustrated by opponent's defense. They avoided that in Canada last year and so far it's looking good in Switzerland too. Even without Semin, Ovechkin and Fedorov, the killer line in Quebec, Russia has enough firepower in Kovalchuk, Radulov, Morozov etc.
Russia started with slaughtering Germany 5-0 and continued by giving a warm bear hug to France, 7-2. While they didn't concentrate through whole the games, they started well and start slipping after securing the win. This obviously is not something to do with real opponents but one rarely get bored if playing in playoffs against Canada/Czech/Sweden/etc.
One player who has especially been playing well and looked interested whole game is Radulov. He has searched and created scoring opportunities even if the game has already been won. Another good sign is that Kovalchuk has improved from last games and started scoring before the final.
Before Russia's main problem was the goaltending. While they have had decent goalies, there has been a lack of great goalies who can lead the team to victory. Nabokov fixed that last year and Bryzgalov is trying to repeat his performance. Alexei Eremenko, KHL goalie and the best netminder at the Worlds in 2007 played the France game and probably lost his chance to #1 goalie status by allowing those two goal and looking more shaky than Bryzgalov in his game.
A bit weaker performance was provided by Czech even though they did win both games. Denmark was run over 5-0 but 5-2 win over Norway is not good. Norway knows how to defense against "better" countries but letting them to score 2 goals shows lack of concentration and interest. Czech should have enough talent in Jagr, Marek, Zidlizky (I'm not quite sure how to type that...) etc. but to their unfortune, the team is either on or off. If it works, it really works. If it doesn't work, the whole team is pretty disinterested in the game and just wander around the rink occasionally killing opposite players. This far it has been "on" but the Norway game gave some signals of the "off" game in form of lack of interest.
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