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: 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.