Pro Hockey Resume

By: Copenhagen Post – Denmark

Despite a lackadaisical effort against Belarus, the Danish national team’s head coach believes his men will be successful in their quarterfinal

Monday’s 2-1 loss to Belarus failed to prevent the Danish men’s national ice hockey team from moving on to its first-ever IIHF World Championship quarterfinals.

Denmark already knew they were progressing by virtue of Finland’s win over Slovakia, which also ensured Belarus’ elimination. But the game foreshadowed some of the problems the team is likely to face against their yet undetermined opponents.

After two stunning wins over perennial hockey powers Finland and the USA to start the qualification round, Denmark then lost to Germany. Also in the group stages, they lost as expected to Russia 6-1 but trounced a solid Slovakian team 6-0.

With the exception of the Russia game, Denmark has generally beaten the teams it wasn’t supposed to have beaten and lost to those it should have beaten. And the Belarus game served to emphasise that theory.

After a Lars Eller goal just 38 seconds into the game, the Danes appeared to coast the rest of the way. Though with eight penalties and a shaky offence Denmark’s fans sat far from comfortably.

The team relaxed too early towards the end of the second period, conceding an equalising goal. They then watched the game winner slide past goalkeeper Patrick Galbraith with just over two minutes remaining in the final period.

‘It wasn’t a great hockey game – neither by us nor them, because we didn’t really have anything to play for,’ Galbraith told IIHF reporters after the game. ‘Maybe we had a mental block because we’d just seen Finland beat Slovakia to clinch our quarterfinal spot.’
But head coach Per Bäckman felt his team would be back in form for their quarterfinal game.

‘We have two goalies with great self-confidence, we’ve had good statistics and we have all the ingredients to pull off another surprise win,’ he told Sporten.dk.

Denmark will meet Canada, Switzerland or Sweden in their quarterfinal, depending on the results of today’s games.

(AFP) COLOGNE, Germany — Defending champions Russia maintained their perfect world championship record on Thursday with a 3-1 Group A win over Belarus.

Sergei Mozyakin collected a goal and an assist, while Washington Capitals goalkeeper Semyon Varlamov needed to make only 19 saves.

Mozyakin put Russia into the lead halfway through the first period, sweeping the puck into the net from Maxim Sushinsky’s razor-sharp pass on the powerplay.

In the second period, Russia added two more goals through Alexander Ovechkin and Artyom Anisimov before Alexei Kalyuzhny netted a consolation for Belarus 7:30 into the third period.

Despite the win, Russia’s veteran striker Sergei Fedorov said his team can play better.

“It’s not perfect, and it never will be, especially in a tournament like this,” he said. “But it’s positive and we’ve got the job done in the three first games.”

“There’s no time to relax, we will now face a lot of good teams and we have to concentrate on doing things much better every day.”

In the late Group A match Slovakia experienced few troubles against Kazakhstan, clinching a confident 5-1 win.

Marek Zagrapan lifted Slovakia 1-0 up with 3:30 remaining in the first period sending the puck home with a backhand shot from Andrej Sekera pass.

Ivan Ciernik added a double in the second period to give Slovakia a commanding 3-0 lead at the second intermission.

Dmitri Dudarev scored for Kazakhstan 4:03 into the third period, but Tomas Tatar restored Slovakia’s three-goal advantage with a precise penalty shot 10 minutes later.

Andrej Podkonicky rounded off the scoring with 1:55 to go.

Sweden remained top of Group C despite a narrow 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Czech Republic in Mannheim.

The Czechs got off to a flying start clinching the lead with a short-handed goal just 54 seconds into the match.

Their skipper Tomas Rolinek stole the puck from Erik Karlsson and sent it past Sweden goalie Jonas Gestavsson.

The Swedes pulled level at 24:03 through Magnus Paajarvi Svensson, who fired in from the left face-off circle.

But Petr Hubacek restored the Czechs’ lead, sending the puck into the net from Jiri Novotny’s pass five minutes later.

In the early Group C match Norway battled back from a goal down to outscore 5-1 France, pushing their opponents into the relegation round.

By Russia Today

The Gagarin Cup finalists, AK Bars and MVD Balashikha, will need game seven to decide who will take all the glory in Europe’s top hockey league’s 2009-10 season.

AK Bars Kazan leveled the score in the series at 3-3, destroying their rivals on home ice with a 7-1 scoreline.

All the previous games of the final have been super-tight, but Balashikha players, who knew a win would make them champions, never stood a chance against the Snow Leopards on Sunday.

Zinetula Bilyaletdinov’s men opened the scoring through Niko Kapanen in the seventh minute of the game. Then Grigory Panin doubled AK Bars lead with a little more than a minute left to play in the opening period, 2-0.

And after conceding three more in the second 20 minutes, MVD realized they should start preparing for the deciding game, which will take place in Balashikha on Tuesday, April 27.

Defending KHL champions AK Bars continued to tear the visitors apart – they collected too many penalty minutes in the third period to see the game finish at 7-1.

The MVD consolation goal came from Aleksander Shibaev with two minutes to play.

“Good game. Good result. The series continue,” Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, AK Bars boss, commented after the game.

And, despite a severe blow, MVD are also far from panicking.

”Nothing terrible happened, believe me. Ak Bars scored four of their goals in powerplay. The atmosphere in our locker room is wonderful. There’s no depression,” MVD coach Oleg Znarok told Sport-Express newspaper.

By Helsingin Sanomat

Regular season winners and runners-up blown away

Well! There’s a turnup for the book!
TPS Turku (sixth in the regular SM-Liiga season) and HPK Hämeenlinna (5th) emerged from the semi-final stage of the playoffs as the stronger teams and booked themselves a place in the finals. The best-of-seven final series will begin on Thursday (HPK vs. TPS in Hämeenlinna) and will run through until one team has taken four victories.
The title and the destination of the Canada Trophy for 2009/2010 should be decided no later than May 2nd.

In the end, a little piece of Finnish ice hockey history (never before have two teams from outside the top four made it through to the finals in this way) was created very emphatically – at least in the Turkuhalli arena.
TPS bludgeoned the SM-Liiga winners JYP of Jyväskylä in a 6-1 rout, with four goals in the second period leaving no doubt which was the better side on the night.
HPK were pushed a little harder by league runners- up KalPa from Kuopio, but hung on to win 4-3 after coming from behind to erase a 2-0 deficit from the first period.
In both cases the underdogs won the series of matches by 4 wins to 2.

It is not exactly as though complete rank outsiders have won their way to the top table: HPK were Finnish champions in 2006 and bronze medalists in 2007, and TPS have an illustrious history with eight titles won in a purple period between 1989 and 2001.
All the same, in the case of TPS in particular, it has been “tradition” rather than “results” that has been the watchword for the team for the past few years, when the dominant force in the league has been Kärpät from Oulu (four wins between 2004 and 2008 and the runner-up spot to JYP last year).
HPK will be looking to earn their second title, TPS their tenth.

Turku’s second coming has been duly noted in the city, which has the second-largest arena in Finland, with a capacity of more than 11,000.
Back in the day, the hall was regularly full, but these past lean years it has not been.
Last night, however, it was packed out again as 11,107 spectators sang their hearts out and delivered a standing ovation during the final minutes of the third period.
HPK Hämeenlinna, if they win, will be a very Finnish champion.
It is the only club in the entire SM-Liiga not to have a single foreign-born player on the roster this year.

The fate of the bronze medals will be determined quite quickly – nobody wants a long and drawn out battle for third place, after all.
JYP and KalPa will meet in Jyväskylä on Friday in a winner-takes-all encounter.

Finnish SM liiga:

HIFK – JYP 3-4

HPK – Lukko 1-0

Jokerit – SaiPa 4-3

Kärpät – Pelicans 3-2

TPS – Tappara 3-2 rl

Ässät – Blues 2-1

Swiss NLA:

EHC Biel – Rapperswil Jona Lakers 0:2

SC Bern – HC Lugano 4:2

EV Zug – Ambri Piotta 3:1

Kloten Flyers – SCL Tigers 5:4

ZSC Lions – Genève Servette 6:4

Fribourg – HC Davos 1:3