Marian Gaborik, Leon Draisaitl and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare scored on US goaltender Jonathan Quick, who made 14 saves.
Advertisement
“You saw on a couple of our mistakes – turnovers, pinching, giving them odd-man breaks – they were able to capitalize”, Kane said.
Goaltending was expected to be the strength of the US team but was shaky in the opener as Quick allowed three goals on nine shots through two periods while European counterpart Jaroslav Halak stopped all 35 shots he faced. Team USA will go up against Canada on Tuesday at 7:00 P.M. Central also on ESPN. “It’s a Hockey Canada staple to make it hard to score”.
In playoff Tortorella form, he refused to divulge his lineup and said, “Don’t infer”. It’s a spot that we didn’t want to be in. “They got the flags flying and the faces painted, yelling at us, throwing stuff at us”.
The last time Crosby wore the Maple Leaf on home ice he scored the winning goal in overtime of the gold medal game at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
The Americans are chasing the tournament just as they chased the Europeans in this one after falling behind 1-0 on Marian Gaborik’s two-on-one conversion off a Frans Nielsen feed following just 4:19 into the match.
“You have to give the opposing team some credit here as far as how well they defended, but I thought there were chances where another play was there, it just didn’t happen”, Tortorella said. “He’s going to be a great player in this game for a long time”. “We’ve come here to play nine periods and like everybody else we want to play next weekend”. He played like he was in prime mid-season form. Price looked like he did during his MVP season of 2014-15 early when he was forced to make a nifty boot save on Ondrej Palat’s redirection. With goal differential a potential tiebreaker, every goal counts, and Europe will try to keep things rolling against the Czech Republic on Monday and Canada on Wednesday. “But the part of the game that bothers me most is creating some scoring chances, better quality scoring chances”. I feel good. When you play late into June and then step in to this level in September that helps with adjusting, finding chemistry.
“He’s obviously an incredible player and he’s very easy to play with”, Marchand said. He made a nice steal of the puck inside the Czech blue line, took a feed from Matt Duchene and in one motion whipped a gorgeous backhand pass to Joe Thornton, wide open to the back side of the goal.
“The goalie was really good”, Babcock said. The United States – which failed to medal in the Sochi Olympics and now has been shut out in three straight global games – likely has to defeat the heavily favored Canadians on Tuesday to have any hope of advancing to the semifinals. He made 27 saves against the Czechs and was particularly sharp early in the game before Canada pulled away. I’ll tentatively say Sweden, but it could go either way.
Advertisement
Carey Price went almost 10 months between game action after a knee injury last season, but looks to have quickly regained past form. It just comes down to preparing the right way and just letting your instincts take over.
