Ice Hockey: Great Britain suffer penalties woe

Great Britain picked up a point from a 5-4 defeat to South Korea after penalty shots in yesterday’s opening match of their Winter Olympics pre-qualification tournament in Japan.

Britain, Olympic champions in 1936 and bronze medallists in 1924, let slip a two-goal lead three times before Colin Shields and David Longstaff – on his 99th international appearance – missed in the shoot-out.

Craig Peacock and Longstaff (powerplay) put Tony Hand’s side 2-0 up inside five minutes and Ben O’Connor restored their two-goal cushion by the end of the first period after Kim Won-jung had pulled one back.

Kim scored again to pull Korea to within one once more, only for Shields to open up a two-goal margin for a third time. But Kim, with his hat-trick, and Geunho Kim made it 4-4 to force overtime, which failed to find a winner.

It went to a shoot-out, with Shields and Longstaff missing for GB and Kim Sang-wook and Cho Min-ho successful for Korea.

Hand said: “We started brilliantly and got a great start with some great goals. Korea never gave up and are a very dangerous team. I thought we took it to them in the third period and were unlucky not to score. The guys played their hearts out and everyone back home should be very proud of them. We had great chances to win it in overtime but it was not to be. I am very proud of them and we are still very much alive in this tournament.”

Britain play their second game today against Romania. Victory and a win for hosts Japan against Korea in today’s other game would mean a winner-takes-all clash between GB and Japan tomorrow. The winners of that game would go through to final qualifying in Germany in February for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.