“Didn’t you defend your homeland?”

It is precisely because of the attitude to the game as to military operations that the silver of the Russian team was left without a golden sheen, and the fans and the players left a bad memory of themselves

It was really embarrassing not when young Nathan McKinnon brought the score to a dry tennis score, but when most of the Russian national team players reached for the exit and “leaked” into it without looking back. At that very moment, an orchestra appeared on the far side of the O2 arena, and one could guess that the musicians were not settling on the impromptu stage in order to play something incendiary. In the end, if the hockey players did not understand that the awards ceremony was going on and that the anthem in honor of the winners of the 2015 World Cup would still be performed, then the management could figure it out and carefully correct Kovalchuk and the company. But no one, except for an employee of the directorate, who urged not to leave at least the remaining seven, did not react to force majeure.

Yes, there’s nothing to play around and get out of - they left with annoyance with their heads down, supplementing the game shame (if you call a spade a spade) with unworthy behavior of a real athlete.

The gesture, whether it was voluntary or involuntary, turned out to be rough, but quite in line with the current trend: if not the Russian anthem, then none; if not victory, then everything has gone to hell - enemies are all around, and we, smearing tears on our painted cheeks, will show them more next time.

Commentator Viktor Gusev, who was sitting three meters from me, took off his headset a long time ago, which meant: Channel One, once again falling into a puddle with the interception of a landmark sports broadcast, does not show the awards ceremony. That is, it would probably not be a pity to spend precious airtime on the triumph, but to adequately accept failure and pay tribute to the winner - we will not have the strength for this under any circumstances. We can show condescending nobility only if we dominate and win, and nothing else.

The audience of 17,000, with the exception of its very solid Russian part, felt it and was happy for the Canadian team. Yes, all the beautiful May Prague, which Russian fans thoroughly got closer to the final with their paramilitary spirit, also barely endured until Sunday. Not all hockey tourists from Russia showed themselves in the same way as my outrageous neighbors on the flight from Moscow (they went nothing more and less than “to take Prague”), but there were more than ever many Russians who put on military uniforms in the capital of the Czech Republic .

Fans of any of the teams participating in the World Cup did not use military symbols in their various and most unimaginable paraphernalia, and even more so did not wear khaki uniforms, while ours did it all the time. So I tried to understand: what do we want to prove with stars, caps and tunics to the city and the world? That we continue to "liberate Europe" when she doesn't really need it? What "grandfathers fought"? Well, these are the grandfathers, and not the half-drunk current army ...

The reaction to provoking manifestations could not have been otherwise. At the finals, I ended up in the subway next door to a quite decent Russian family, the head of which, in response to a remark about the abundance of caps, gently tried to convince me that this is also how love for the Motherland is manifested. He was quite sincere, but impenetrable in his message. Like, probably, the rest of the 86 percent who are promised victory in honor of the Victory for any reason.

On Monday night, one of those “loving the motherland” patriots, whom the hockey players “did not defend,” ran towards us, swearing at the whole of Prague. The Czechs completely missed the medals, and even at home, but the reaction was different: they, of course, were worried, and there were tears too, but no one equated defeat with a bayonet. We have reached the point of absurdity when fans come to hockey as if they were going to war. So we get “in return” the words that the head coach of the Canadian national team Todd McLellan said: “It was not a victory with a score of 3:2, but an destruction with a score of 6:1” It's a shame, but the reaction and the realities of the final corresponded.

I did not go to our hockey players, because I had no questions for them. I do not believe the tears of the general manager Andrey Safronov, which allegedly sounded in his voice in a television interview. “We all really wanted to win, but it didn’t work out.”

And it couldn't work, to be honest. The strategic plan with the historical entry to Canada in the final turned into a cruel fiasco in a game in which the Russian team had no chance to win. It is probably possible to adapt to the strategy and choose a convenient route, but hockey, as I wrote in Novaya Gazeta in one of my previous reports from Prague, does not forgive this.

Silver awards in a different situation would have been a worthy result, and no one would have thrown a stone at the Russian team. She really got under an avalanche of injuries, found the game with difficulty, resisted as best she could, and gave all her strength in the playoffs. She earned her luck in the quarter-finals and semi-finals with her hard work, the amazing game of goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovsky, the sniper genius of Sergei Mozyakin, whose desperate solo pass predetermined the successful outcome of the match with the Americans. But the fact that with the “Maple Leaves” one cannot play against the thin and only a miracle can help was clear to everyone who really looks at things.

This Canada, for all the fact that such stars as Sidney Crosby and Jason Spezza played for it, was not an Olympic model of the composition, perhaps by 30 percent, but it was a team. I have not seen such a luxurious and uninhibited game of one of the opponents in the final for a long time. Such humiliation of another finalist also has not been seen for a long time. Moreover, the finalist, which included no less world-class stars (and by and large even more), but these stars, as happened before with such defeats, played on their own. Malkin, Ovechkin, Kovalchuk, Tarasenko and company in the second period, which destroyed the Russian national team, made one (!) Shot on target by Mike Smith. And, if not for the shot of desperation of the same veteran Sergei Mozyakin (Evgeny Malkin only slightly corrected the flight of the puck), ours would have left the ice without a single goal at all. The way the attacking Canadians tore apart the already frail defense of the Russians was incredibly beautiful - looking at the passes behind the back, leaving the puck, changing the rhythm, non-standard solutions, one could sob, including with delight.

As the wonderful parodist Alexander Ivanov wrote, “without turning my burning face away, I endured this horror to the end.” The impression of hockey played by the brilliant Canadian team turned out to be stronger than the humiliation that I, as a normal Russian, undoubtedly experienced, sitting on the top of the crowded O2 arena.

And if it were not for the transcendental quality of the defeat, and not for this ill-fated premature departure from the site during the closing ceremony, I would sincerely rejoice at the silver won in hard torment.

Oleg Znarok received a blow that, albeit not immediately, became fatal for his predecessors as head coach - both Vyacheslav Bykov and Zinetula Bilyaletdinov. Silver should not deceive: there was no golden sheen in it, no matter how unpleasant it was to realize it. One way or another, you have to be aware. Moscow (not the bosses, I mean, but the upcoming World Cup next year) will demand this, and very soon.

…Prague parted ways with the World Hockey Forum quite casually. Like the whole country, the final result of the Czech team did not suit her, and the choice of the great Jaromir Jagr as the most valuable player of the championship, although it was accepted with a bang, was not too comforting.

But the fact that Prague and Ostrava jointly broke the attendance record, surpassing even last year's Minsk, could be a source of pride. But the Czechs are not accustomed to boasting of achievements, this is not in their style.

Prague — Moscow