The Scandinavian rivals meet again on Saturday in another warmup for the tournament which starts on September 17 in Toronto.
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“It’s important that we go in there with the mentality that we want to win and we know it’s not going to be easy”, Giroux said. We’ve done some good things.
Playing for your country carries a different set of rules for the captain of the Montreal Canadiens.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden – Loui Eriksson and Patric Hornqvist scored twice each to lead Sweden past Finland 6-3 in the Scandinavian rivals’ second warmup game for the World Cup of Hockey on Saturday.
“I wasn’t in the Olympics, but being a fan, being a USA guy, it makes us want to go after them and win one of these tournaments”, says Dubinsky, a member of the nastiest, grittiest, Tortorellist bottom six in the tournament.
Tortorella was OK with his team’s performance.
“He’s an electrifying player”, Matthews said of MacKinnon. If other people are going, they tend to take some ice time. As expected, Canada will be the favorite going into any global hockey tournament.
“You want to get all those kind of game kind of situations in as much as you can and really try to push yourself out there”. Well see where it goes. We knew half the team had been playing on big ice in the last few weeks. “We’ve just to get a bit more out of him”.
Weve got some work to do, Tortorella said after practice Monday.
“(James) Van Riemsdyk came in (Saturday), didn’t play (Friday) and I thought he took some of the minutes”, Tortorella said. Thats just the lay of the land of this tournament: I cant wait.
You’ve got your barbecue fired up, and you’ve called everyone you know to come over.
The hockey on Friday night was better than expected from groups of players who were kicking back at the cottage not that long ago. Since you can expect Crosby to play against Team Russia, there will be more changes, but Babcock is feeling good about where this is headed. “That era of United States hockey players were one of the greatest that ever played, so we’re trying to recreate that and establish ourselves as the next wave of great American players”. “I thought he gave us some good minutes”.
Logan Couture and Jay Bouwmeester also had goals for Canada.
American coach John Tortorella said his team “played better minutes tonight” than they did in Friday’s win, but wasn’t exactly thrilled with forward Max Pacioretty, who played only 10:05. When you don’t score, you press. First, John Tavares hit Kesler the first time they got near each other and then Joe Thornton caught him with a late hit in the first to nullify a Canadian power play.
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Canada is not flawless by any stretch of the imagination and there is plenty of work to be done in the next few days. Doughty was reminded in the morning that Tortorella kept saying he wanted his team to “inflict” in the exhibition games and well into the tournament. As long as the games are entertaining and players don’t suffer any major injuries that ruin the National Hockey League season, I’ll watch excitedly, just glad that the puck drop to a new National Hockey League season is just right around the corner. “He’s been talking about that ever since we got here (in Columbus), especially”.
