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.

Reuters

Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky has urged the NHL to allow its players to go to the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has been non-committal about taking a three-week break from the season to allow players to compete in Russia.

“The Olympic Games help hockey,” Gretzky said. “The last eight years, the Russian players, Swedish players and all the European guys have played in the United States and Canada,” he said referring to the Vancouver and Salt Lake City Games.

“I understand … there are worries about shutting down the league for 20 days. But I think this is one time as North Americans we owe it to them to go over to their Olympics.”

Gretzky said February’s final between the United States and Canada was one of hockey’s best games.

“There are a few games that go down in history, like in 1980 when the U.S. beat the Russians. It was just exciting. It was a positive for our sport.”

The Canadian Press

BOBRUISK, Belarus — Guy Carbonneau is hoping to turn a disappointing loss to Switzerland into a motivational tool for his Canadian team at IIHF World U18 Championship.

The Canadians were upset 3-1 by the Swiss on Tuesday in their first preliminary round game of the annual hockey tournament.

“It’s a bump in the road and hopefully we can find a way to get back,” said Carbonneau, the Canadian head coach. “Sometimes that’s what you need – a good ass-kicking to get you going.”

In the other early game Tuesday, Finland hammered Latvia 7-2. In the late games, Russia beat the Czech Republic 4-1 while Sweden edged the U.S. 4-2.

Gregor Hoffman and Samuel Guerra scored in the first period to give the Swiss a 2-0 lead.

“We knew they were going to work for 60 minutes,” said Carbonneau. “That’s the kind of team that they have.”

Quinton Howden of Oakbank, Man., cut the lead to 2-1 midway through the second but Joel Vermin secured the victory with an empty-net goal with five seconds to go in the third.

“It took us a period to really find our legs,” Carbonneau said. “We played a little bit better at the end but I don’t think it was the effort that we wanted to have in the first game.”

Canada played just one exhibition game prior to the start of the tournament, a 5-4 loss to Finland. With several players on the roster coming off long layoffs following the end of the major junior regular season, Carbonneau said he did the best he could to prepare.

“We have to remember that most of these guys haven’t played a game in over a month, maybe a month and a half,” he said. “To get into a tournament like this with the best players in the world, it’s not easy.”

“But I think we prepared ourselves the right way,” he added. “We had a bunch of good practices.”

Winnipeg’s Calvin Pickard made 31 saves for Canada while Lukas Meili stopped 33 shots in the Swiss net.

“Today we tried to play on our skills instead of just a lot of hard work and we got caught,” Carbonneau said.

He’ll be hoping to see a better effort Thursday when Canada faces host Belarus.

Canada is trying to improve on a fourth-place finish last year. The Canadians won the tournament in 2003 and 2008 and took the silver medal in 2005.

By Sport Express – Russia

The famous Russian retired ice hockey player Igor Larionov commented on the failure of our national team at the Vancouver quarterfinal.
The Sport Express correspondent met the well-known centre forward several hours after the match against Canadians. It was clear that Larionov was tired, distressed and wanted to spend the rest of the night not talking about hockey.

Nevertheless he agreed to comment on the game for Sport Express exclusively.

“Our problem is that we stopped judging the situation earnestly,” said Larionov. “We try to prove to ourselves that everything in NHL is bad, primitive, everything is wrong. And we ceased to perceive things really.”

“You see big deeds should stand up for such great words as “patriotism” and “Russia” and we should do these things every day. Starting from the children’s hockey. But this is a very serious topic let us discuss it some time later…”

“Of course I understand that we have already won Canadians on their ice – at the World Cup in Quebec.”

“But in that match their head coach Ken Hitchcock got lost and did not know what to do himself in the third period. Not the team was to blame for that loss but the coach personally – yeah, he lost that match.”

“And in Bern [in the World Cup-2009 final] we stopped having scored two goals and played to retain the score.”

“This time it was simply impossible to repeat anything of the kind. Because the Canadians played with the entire team – a group of people who went flat out till the last man.”

“Look, Russian supporters knew who Crosby is, but they did not know Morrow, Toews, Perry or Richards. And these people made the game for Canada.”

“In the game aspect we had almost no chances at all. In every moment Canadians had an excellent support of one another – in defence, in attack, in the centre, at the boards, behind the goals.”

“Near every Canadian player there was his partner doing his best. Their stars agreed to play seemingly inglorious parts because the team benefited from this.”

“The same Richards, Toews or Morrow spend 20-25 minutes on the ice in their clubs and here they got less time and were to do dirty work. But they were proud that they are a part of the team and contribute to the overall success. That was the difference.”

“And the Russian team lacked this,” said Larionov pointed to his heart. “And we should not talk about any particular player. Some could have had just a bad day and what is from this? There are 20 players in the team.”

“In the Stanley Cup play-offs the leaders can be not so conspicuous in the first matches and so ordinary people call the tune and win matches. This tune winds up the leaders and there they come in and their mastery and experience do their part.”

“The goof of our coaches was the one that they knew about the hockey in NHL only by default and focused on their success at the World Championships. And that is a road to nowhere.”

By Russia Today

Canada will play for a medal in the men’s Olympic hockey tournament in Vancouver after a decisive 7-3 victory over arch-rival Russia in their quarterfinal encounter.

It looked like a powerhouse overriding a group of impaired stars, as team Canada dismantled Russian to reach the Vancouver Olympics semifinals.

They wanted to play Russia and they got it! What was supposed to become the quarter final of dream, in fact, turned into a one team show and that team’s name was Canada.

It took barely two minutes for Canada to stamp its authority in the game as Dan Boyle tip-toed through Russia’s defense to set up an easy tap in for Ryan Getzlaf.

Ten minutes in, Dan Boyle was at it again, this time unloading a monster shot from the blue line, which benefited nicely from a sweet screen by Patrick Marleau on the power play.

And then, a minute later, Jonathan Toews took to the wing, drew in defenders and offloaded a goal chance on a platter to Rick Nash, who made no mistake slotting it past Evgeny Nabokov’s outstretched leg.

Russia shot back through Dmitry Kalinin’s effort, but soon the differense was again restarted by Brenden Morrow stuffing the puck at the right post two minutes before the break.

In the second, the Canadian assault continued. They chased Russian starting goal tender Evgeny Nabokov from the net when defenceman Shea Weber ripped a shot through him at 4:07 of the second to make it 6-1. Nabokov was replaced by Ilya Bryzgalov.

Shortly after that, Maxim Afinogenov made it 6-2, but again Canada had no intention to let the Russians take a breath of fresh air – Corry Perry upset Bryzgalov fixing the score at a frightening 7-2.

Also in the second, Sergey Gonchar, on the power play, beat Canadian goal tender Roberto Luongo, but that was all the Russian offense could manage to do this evening.

The nightmare continued in the third period, when the Canadians quite capably ‘dried’ the game, underlining Russia’s impotence this evening.

7-3 was the final score there. Canada rush into the semifinals, while the only consolation for the Russians might be the fact that not many Russian fans witnessed the nightmare live due to time difference.