Frederik Andersen is in Minsk, Belarus with Team Denmark to play in the Olympic Qualifier for Group D. Things are not going well for the pre-tournament favourite.
On Thursday the Danes were embarrassed with a 5-2 loss to the home team. Today they played Slovenia in a game they needed to win in order to be able to win the tournament.
They continued their sloppy, offensively weak play, full of mistakes and more turnovers than all the Danish bakeries combined. Slovenia took a 1-0 lead into the third period and seemed to have total control of the game.
Denmark's tepid offensive efforts dried up even more in the third, where they seemed afraid to try to get in deep for fear of sparking another Slovenian rush the other way. The Slovenes made it 2-0 halfway through the period.
As play continued, Oliver Bjorkstrand accidentally upended Andersen.
Here is the collision that forced #Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen to leave Denmark's game against Slovenia earlier. pic.twitter.com/YBimNJ1cme
p>— Alex Nunn (@aj_ranger) 2 September 2016
Alex Nunn provided a full video of the entire incident (sound is removed intentionally), so major stick taps to Alex for taking the time.
As you can see, Andersen moves freely, gets up on his own, skates off on his own and the only thing we can see is some poking around at his equipment.
As you can also see, there were less than five minutes to play in a game where the Danes were thoroughly outplayed. The game was lost.
Danish news sites extensively covered the loss and mention this incident only in passing. They don't even take the time to speculate on any injury or equipment problem or mere precaution in Andersen's exit. The IIHF game story doesn't even mention the incident at all.
There's a lot of jumping to conclusions going on, but I'll sit and wait for official word, and update you all when I hear anything.
They Olympic dream is over for Denmark, they can't win this now, so expect someone other than Andersen to be in net on Sunday for their final game against Poland.
Faceoff.dk reports that the Danish Ice Hockey Federation issued a press release saying Andersen had a shoulder injury that would keep him out of action for a week or two.
Andersen flying back to Toronto this weekend to be examined by #Leafs medical staff
— Kristen Shilton (@kristen_shilton) 2 September 2016
Many World Cup of Hockey players were scheduled to have their medicals before training camp starts for those teams, so this may be just moved up two days.