I follow some very surprising hockey people on Twitter, and one of them is Gunnar Svensson. Svensson happens to represent Nicklas Backstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Magnus Paajarvi, Frans Nielsen and Anton Stralman (among others) as an NHLPA-certified agent, and he Tweets some intriguing stories, including one from Eurohockey.com's Dennis Mende that you'd think would belong in the 90's, not 2014.
According to Mende, the Austrian Olympic hockey team delivered a stinker of a performance in their stunning 4-0 loss to Slovenia for a simple reason: Thomas Vanek, Michel Grabner, Michal Raffl and the rest of a big, tough and heavy Austrian team went out drinking the night before they lost to Slovenia (update: via Aftonbladet, the Austrian reports are worse, suggesting that the players were all but literally punch-drunk):
There were discussions after Austria's weak and often helpless performance against Slovenia in the quarterfinal qualification of the men's ice hockey tournament at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi on Tuesday. The answer might be an easy but shocking one. After a 3-1 win against Norway to end group B on the 3rd spot on Sunday a group of players celebrated way too heavy. Until up to 6 am the players hung out drinking In the Austria House and a local club in Krasnaya Polyana.
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