Pro Hockey Resume

By: RIA Novosti – Russia

The head coach of Russia’s national hockey team said on Monday he had no plans to resign despite major defeats the team suffered this year.

The Russian team began the current season with a humiliating 7:3 defeat in a quarter-final clash with Canada at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February.

The alarming trend continued as the team nearly lost the 2010 World Championship semifinals to Germany on Saturday, scoring the victorious goal (3:2) just under two minutes before the third period ended.

On Sunday, the defending double world champions lost 1:2 to the Czech Republic. The Czechs stopped Russia’s winning streak of 27 straight victories and took the title for the first time in five years.

Vyacheslav Bykov said he “did not even think” of submitting his resignation before his contract with the team expires in August 2010.
“Right now we just need to sit down and think it over. The decision is not up to me alone, it is also for the [Russian Hockey] Federation to decide,” he said.

Bykov said he saw no major mistakes made by the coaches during the entire tournament.

“Until the final, we did the right thing and made things happen,” the head coach said.

Among the main reasons for the defeat, Bykov named poor delivery of opportunities by the Russian team, injuries among Russian players and a flying start by the Czechs, who scored just 20 seconds into the match by firing on an unguarded post.

He also praised Czech goalie Tomas Vokoun, who stopped 35 shots out of 36 during the game. Vokoun was named as one of the Czech Republic’s three best players for the tournament.

“The game took a dramatic turn for us from the very beginning. After letting the first goal in, we had to break the opponent’s defense. But their goalie was brilliant. And, despite being a team of masters, we failed to deliver the opportunities that we had,” Bykov said.

The head coach criticized the board of the Continental Hockey League (KHL) for increasing the number of foreign players and coaches to the detriment of young home-grown athletes.

“If there is no understanding between the KHL leadership and the Hockey Federation, if we continue hogging the blanket, there will literally be no hockey in Russia… Without home-grown players, we’ll find ourselves in a dreadful hole very soon,” he said.

Both goals into the Russian net were made by Czech players, playing for Russian KHL teams.

By: Canada.com

COLOGNE, Germany — Team Canada responded on Wednesday to an attack by the International Ice Hockey Federation against North American and European players, including Canadian Olympic hero Sidney Crosby, who aren’t playing at the IIHF world hockey championship.

“I think it’s inappropriate,” said Hockey Canada official Scott Salmond, director of men’s national teams.

IIHF communications director Szymon Szemberg, in a commentary on the home page of the organization’s official website earlier Wednesday, ripped no-shows for turning their backs on their national teams, their fans and the hockey organizations that helped them develop.

He questioned excuses such as nagging injuries or, in Crosby’s case, a long stretch of hockey that includes the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs, an 82-game regular season, the Vancouver Olympics, and two rounds of playoffs this year.

“Why is a 22-year-old Sidney Crosby tired when a 34-year-old Ryan Smyth is answering the bell for his country despite having represented Canada at the worlds already on eight occasions?” he wrote.

“Players who say no to representing their country at the world championship without a legitimate reason turn their backs not only on the team and its fans but also to the system which developed them and made them rich and famous.

“They should pay back, but they don’t.”

Salmond said he will raise Canada’s objections privately at the next Hockey Canada-IIHF meeting.

Team Canada captain Ray Whitney said the IIHF is being unfair to players like Crosby and is displaying ignorance about the grind of the NHL season.

“The IIHF doesn’t understand how hard the NHL is and how hard the schedule is,” said Whitney, who took over as captain after Smyth was knocked out of the tournament with an ankle injury.

“I don’t think it’s fair for him to say that. I think he should concentrate more on making (the tournament) more appealing for guys like him to want to come over here and play.”

Szemberg defended his commentary, telling Canwest News Service he’s received many positive comments from fans on Facebook and from journalists via e-mail.

Team Canada general manager Mark Messier has made it clear that he was putting no pressure on Olympians to participate this year.
The only member of the gold medal-winning Canadian team in February to participate is rugged Anaheim Ducks winger Corey Perry.

Szemberg praised high-profile participants like Russian superstar Alexander Ovechkin and Czech superstar Jaromir Jagr for attending this year’s tournament.

But he blasted the 25 other elite Czech players — as well as numerous top players from countries like Sweden and Switzerland — for rejecting invitations.

He estimated that 100 to 120 players who could have played in the 16-team tournament either turned down invitations or made clear in advance that they wouldn’t be available.

And many of them didn’t have the excuse of being tired or unavailable due to the NHL playoffs.

“This is by no means exclusively an NHL/Stanley Cup issue,” he wrote.

“Players who earn serious money in European professional leagues are also too tired or too unmotivated.”

He noted that many players beg off due to injuries or fatigue even though it was known that they’d have played with pain had their teams remained in the playoffs.

“How can a player who is 22 or 25 or 27, and who was just eliminated from the playoffs, be tired? Tired is a miner who works in a damp pit in Miktivka, in the Donetz Plateau in Ukraine, who never sees daylight and who provides living for a family of five in a modest two-room apartment. That is tired.

“Tired is a divorced mother with two young kids who double shifts as a nurse assistant and cleaning lady to make ends meet.”

The tournament is viewed as a major event for European hockey fans though it is an afterthought for NHL playoff-focused North Americans.

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: The Voice of Russia

The Russian ice hockey team has left for Germany to clash with other national teams for the world champion’s title from this Friday to May 23rd. Russia, – the current world champion, will try to defend their title and prove themselves in the right for their utter failure at the Vancouver Olympics. The Russian hockey players hope that they will manage to end this year’s difficult season on an optimistic note, while the fans keep harping on what’s become their only incantation: “Only a win will do!”.

The world ice hockey championship in Germany may prove quite an ordeal to the Russian hockey players. This season has been by far the least lucky for the winners of the two previous world championships. In Vancouver Team Russia lost to the Canadians in the quarterfinals. Quite recently the Vyacheslav Bykov-coached squad lost their unofficial European champions’ title to the Finns, in the European ice hockey championships.

Besides, Russian leading players have been continually suffering from injuries. Specifically, the team captain Alexei Morozov will fail to play in Germany for that reason. It was Morozov that proved quite helpful in securing Russia’s win in the previous two world championships. One of the best NHL goalies Ilya Bryzgalov of Russia will also have to miss the championship in Germany. Nor will the best striker of the Continental Hockey League Alexander Radulov, who scored the winning goal in the 2009 finals against the Canadians, be able to play in Germany because of an injury.

Yet, Team Russia boasts the longest list of players that it has entered for the championships. The strongest NHL pucksters – Kovalchuk, Ovechkin, Siomin and Varlamov will come to Germany to reinforce the Russian squad. That’s the only reason why Russian players should go to Germany at all, says the president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, a legendary goalie Vladislav Tretyak, and elaborates.

We will certainly fight for gold medals, Vladislav Tretyak says. But we’ll have to make a Herculean effort to achieve this. Other teams are invariably set to beat the Russians, and they will try especially hard this time, for they will have every reason to brag if they’ve beaten such hockey stars as Ovechkin and Kovalchuk. Everybody realizes this, whether coaches or players. So Team Russia will have to play every single game as if it were the finals game.

Despite the odds, bookmakers think much of Russia’s chances to win, the more so since the Vancouver Olympics’ gold and silver medal winners, the Canadians and the US team, are not sending their top-notch players to Germany. Most leading players in the US and Canada have decided against exerting themselves at the world championships on the assumption that that they’ve already had enough by winning the Olympics. But one should not underestimate the rivals. Team Russia will first take on Slovaks on May 9th.