Slovakia vs Germany Prediction 10 May 2024

From zero to hero. The first matches of the starting World Championship immediately immerse us in the atmosphere of fierce confrontations. The Germans and Slovaks are certainly solid mid-tier teams, but at the last World Championship, the German team reached the final, where they only lost to the hockey pioneers. The Slovaks have excellent youth, but they failed last year's tournament – the team did not make it out of the group.

Slovakia looked extremely unconvincing in the latest friendly matches: two losses to the tournament hosts – the Czechs, 11 pucks conceded from the Germans in paired matches, and a victory over the tournament outsider – Poland. But in the calendar year, the balance of wins and losses is positive. Before the tournament, the team was reinforced by Tomas Tatar and Simon Nemec. The arrival of Juraj Slafkovsky from Montreal is also expected as a reinforcement. These players should add efficiency to the attack.

Germany, on the contrary, has a negative balance of wins and losses this year, and moreover, conceded 36 pucks in the last 10 matches. This is a lot for a team that wants to at least repeat its success. The German lineup includes experienced legionnaires: goalkeeper Philipp Grubauer, as well as forwards Nico Sturm and John-Jason Peterka. There are players with NHL experience, including Dominik Kahun. Overall, the team's composition looks balanced, although there is a slight emphasis on attack, and there are gaps in defense.

Predicted lineups

Slovakia: Skorvanek – Golyan, Nemec – Tatar, Grivik, Cehlarik

Germany: Grubauer – Mueller, Weismann – Elsner, Sturm, Eder

Information about player injuries will be updated throughout the tournament.

Goalkeepers

Stanislav Skorvanek (91.3%, 2.53 GAA) led his club “Michalovce” to the semifinals of the Slovak Extraliga, but it's hard to say how he will cope with the World Championship level workload. Philipp Grubauer did not help Seattle make it to the NHL playoffs and lost the competition for the starting goalkeeper position to Joey Daccord, but the goalkeeper still maintains a high level of competence by European standards.

Editorial prediction

Slovakia is not flawless in defense, having conceded 11 pucks from the Germans in recent head-to-head matches. The team's goalkeeper made quite a few mistakes in recent matches and generally looked uncertain. Therefore, in our opinion, Germany will easily score more than 2.5 pucks in this match.

📊Statistics are everything to us! And we are ready to provide them:

• officially, the clubs have played in 28;

• today's ice hosts have 10;

• the guests have – 16;

• the hosts struck the opponent's goal 60 times;

• the guests – 71 times.