Pro Hockey Resume

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

Sergey Zubov, who recently announced about his refusal to go to Vancouver as reserve player, gave an interview to Sport Express.
SKA man Sergey Zubov called Sport Express correspondent after the match in Sokolniki, where he spend thirty minutes on the ice and was the only one player to score the shootout goal.

“After the KHL All-Star Game and departure to Novokuznetsk I was very busy”, said Zubov. “That is why I had to talk to journalists at night, as I don’t have enough spare time”.

“I didn’t expect that my announcement in Sport Express about my refusal to go to the Olympic games as reserve player would provoke big interest”.

“I have been reading articles in mass media for these six days, read commentaries and online blogs. I was surprised that fans responded to my announcement aggressively, but most of all I was sad that atmosphere of the national team’s preparations for the Olympics had been disturbed”.

“I am not a politician, I am hockey player and I don’t predict all my public moves unlike hockey ones. Moreover I haven’t lived in Russia for a long time and I haven’t restored my vocabulary yet”.

“I think that most probably I was right except the harsh form of my refusal. At the same time I would like to introduce clarity in my announcement”.

“Believe me that I have no claims to the head coach Vyacheslav Bykov. Slava and I are both products of HC CSKA, we played in one club and national team and we are in perfect relations”.

“I know that he has done a lot to restore atmosphere in the national team and Russia’s two victories at the World Championships. I also know in which situation he is ahead of the Olympic games”.

“My refusal was provoked by a call of administrator, who warned me that coaches take me to Vancouver as reserve player. I won’t hide that this conversation shocked me and the explanation is not in the fact that I would be in reserve. The main thing is the form how they informed me about it. To my mind people showed they are not professionals by behaving this way, and I was not ready for it after seventeen seasons of playing in NHL”.

“I think that not all people deal with their own business in the Russian hockey and Bykov is just a hostage of this system. The team of managers should be responsible for formation of the national team’s squad and holding talks with players, while in Russia the head coach has to deal with this job”.

“Vladislav Tretyak is famous former goalkeeper, the world hockey legend, he is manager of our national team, however managers’ work is something absolutely different from what we used to see in Russia. In NHL junior administrator or masseur would never call you and inform you that coaches take you to the team’s roster or not. It’s all manager’s responsibility”.

“Each NHL player has his own agent and manager contacts him at first. That is the main reason why American and Canadian teams never face problems with the national team’s preparations”.

(CP) SASKATOON — A report card on Canada’s performance in the world junior hockey championship final, rated on a scale of one to 10:

Goaltending – Jake Allen saw a lot of shots through the first 30 minutes and while he wasn’t dreadful, he didn’t make the big stops. He was helped out by the pathetic performance – three goals on six shots – by American starter Mike Lee before he was pulled in favour of Jack Campbell after Taylor Hall tied it 3-3 early in the second frame. A major blunder on Derek’s Stepan’s goal to make it 5-3 in the third saw Allen mercifully pulled for Martin Jones, who had no chance on the Americans’ winning goal on overtime.

Score: 3 out of 10.

Defence – Overall a slow-footed group, they were on their heels against the fast-paced U.S. attack early on. And their leader, Alex Pietrangelo, didn’t help by taking a minor and misconduct hitting-from-behind call at the end of the first. Brandon McMillan was full value moving back to defence while Pietrangelo was in the box, and when he returned, Canada took control for a while. Then the defence, particularly Calvin de Haan and Ryan Ellis, were caught for two third-period goals.

Score: 5 out of 10.

Forwards – Luke Adam got an early goal by the fourth line, which should have been a boost, and they got two more on the weak Lee. When it came time to bear down and generate goals in the second and third periods, the star of the tournament Jordan Eberle came through with two goals in the dying minutes. Hall showed his good and bad sides, being stripped of the puck trying to beat a man one-on-one on the first American goal and scoring a game-tying tally in the second frame.

Score: 7 out of 10

Coaching – Shortening the bench in the third period to try to erase a two-goal deficit worked in a round robin win against the Americans and it was coach Willie Desjardins’ only option when the same situation arose in the final. He played the cards he had, and his top gun Eberle got one back on a power play. McMillan was used wisely when Pietrangelo was out.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Total: 22 out of 40.

(AP) The United States rallied to score four unanswered goals Sunday in Saskatoon for a 5-2 victory against Sweden and a spot in the final against Canada. The two rivals will meet Tuesday for world junior gold for the first time since U.S. beat Canada in 2004 because of a fluky goal allowed by Canadian netminder Marc-Andre Fleury.

Canada beat the U.S. 5-4 in a shootout on New Year’s Eve in a game that the U.S. should have won, but suffered a late-game collapse.

“It was a learning experience,” said U.S. captain John Ramage, the son of former NHLer Rob Ramage. “It’s a fun barn with all those fans screaming at us. It’s what I call a good stage-setter.

“Our goal has been to win gold from the start and that’s what we plan to do.”

The U.S. took a 4-2 lead into the final 10 minutes in the round-robin game against Canada, then surrendered goals to Canada’s Jordan Eberle and Alex Pietrangelo, who scored the tying goal while short-handed.

“We’ll use that as motivation,” said U.S. defenceman John Carlson, who scored the game winner against Sweden with 7:26 remaining in the third period.

“The big thing for us is that we have to play a full 60 minutes. We got a little complacent [against Canada last week].”

Ryan Bourque, the son of Ray Bourque and who plays for Patrick Roy’s Quebec Remparts, remarked that the Americans will have to be at their best on Tuesday.

“Obviously, they’ve won five in a row,” he said. “They don’t have many weaknesses. We’re going to have to play a perfect game.”

Jerry D’Amigo tied the game with less than five minutes remaining in the second period. The Swedes managed to kill off a five-minute elbowing major penalty and game misconduct to captain Marcus Johansson and almost scored a short-handed goal at the end of the five-minute disadvantage.

After Carlson put the U.S. ahead in the third period, the Swedes had an opportunity to draw themselves even on a power-play chance. Instead, D’Amigo, a Toronto Maple Leafs prospect, scored a short-handed goal for his second of the game.

A.J. Jenks added an empty-netter for the U.S.