Left off the team along with scoring forwards Kyle Okposo and Tyler Johnson and defensemen Justin Faulk, Kevin Shattenkirk and Cam Fowler, the Stanley Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins winger tweeted after the USA loss: “Just sitting around the house tonight (with) my dog”. Zero goals for defending National Hockey League scoring champ and MVP Patrick Kane.
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“It’s not to say you overlooked them, but I think even the connotation was Europe, so it wasn’t a real team”, Lombardi explained, per CSN Chicago.
“It’s a developmental program, but I think we’ve got a lot of competitive people and we all want to win”, Hughes said.
Lombardi said that the 3-0 loss to Europe put the US behind the “proverbial 8-ball” that felt like a boulder.
They have done well in global play over the past several years and the team is chalk full of young talent – from Patrik Laine and Aleksander Barkov up front to Olli Maatta and Rasmus Ristolainen on the back end – which bodes well for the future. “It’s frustrating, but we [had] a chance to go out there tonight and at least prove to ourselves how we should’ve been playing the whole time”, said Oshie, 29. “We kind of beat ourselves a little bit”. “Most guys don’t get to play against Canada”.
We may not see anything like this team again, but a week of hockey they’ve given us.
Tortorella was not made available to reporters on Wednesday. We have some work to do to get respect back and that doesn’t help. It certainly isn’t good, but not to the extent to the chatter all around us.
When you look at the players left behind or on Team North America you can argue that you could take an entirely different group of American born hockey players and possibly defeat the 2016 World Cup’s version of Team USA. With the likes of Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Artemi Panarin, Vladimir Tarasenko and so many others, Team Russia can score. Instead, they got an even bigger blowout.
“Tomorrow we are going to think how we beat Canada”.
“That was the first thing I said to them, “Play for your country first and then let’s figure out the rest”. “Atmosphere’s going to be unbelievable”.
At the 2:11 mark, Team USA headed to the power play and threw everything at Mrazek who was able to stand tall and keep his position despite the scrums in front of him. Russian Federation led 2-0 going into the third period while Sergei Bobrovsky made 21 saves for the shutout victory. 1-zip big red machine.
I have covered this sport for 12 years now, and I can never remember a more negative reaction to Team USA.
Tuukka Rask made 19 saves for Finland (0-3-3).
The Finns obviously didn’t want their tournament to end this way, with no wins and just one goal, but they said prior to the game that they would be giving it their all. “You might have to tweak a couple things here and there but for the most part, we’re more concerned about how we play. That’s why we went with a team, trying to build a team that can handle momentum swings, and we failed”.
Russian forward Pavel Datsyuk missed the preliminary round finale because of a minor injury.
Much like head coach John Tortorella did in the wake of Tuesday’s 4-2 loss to Canada, Lombardi staunchly defended USA’s roster choices, and the vision that led to those choices.
“I’d say it hasn’t changed much since I played at the Olympics in Vancouver”, Toews said of his role, referring to the 2010 Games in which he emerged as one of Canada’s better players at age 21.
Finland almost opened the scoring three minutes into the second period as Mikael Granlund beat Bobrovsky glove-side, but rang his shot off the post.
But Russia broke the deadlock early in the second when Tarasenko took a nifty goalmouth feed from Ovechkin and redirected into an open net. Malkin provided insurance 3:39 into the third following a two-on-one rush. That’s who teams have to go through to win.
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Fifty-eight seconds later, Vladimir Tarasenko scored to give Russian Federation a 1-0 lead.
