Sweden’s Nicklas Backstrom pounced on a rebound to open the scoring early in the second period and Slovak Marian Gaborik tied the game with under four minutes to play in the frame and set up a tense third period.
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Too bad Team Europe didn’t listen. Outside of Sidney Crosby, excelling without compare on the World Cup stage right now, there’s probably not a more important player to Canada on the worldwide stage.
Tomas Tatar scored his second goal of the game 3:43 into overtime as Team Europe advanced to the final of the World Cup of Hockey with a 3-2 win over Sweden.
As Lundqvist lay on the ice with his head down, the Europeans huddled in the right corner and bounced on their skates to celebrate before shaking hands with the stunned Swedes.
Team Europe coach Ralph Krueger said he’ll likely save his rah-rah speeches for another team because this one simply doesn’t need it. The most exciting parts of the period came right after the puck dropped and right before the horn sounded.
“Nobody would guess we could be in the final”, Hossa said.
To the ice and a marquee match-up at the World Cup of Hockey as hosts Canada would take on Russian Federation, with a spot in the final on the line.
The Europeans are OK with being counted out because they know they wouldn’t even have an opportunity to compete against Canada for their individual countries. “We came really close to getting to the final, but we didn’t get there so there’s definitely going to be some soul-searching personally as a group to figure out if we could have done anything different”.
Few, if anyone, expected the roster of players from the continent’s non-traditional hockey powers to be among the final two in the event created by the NHL and the NHL Players Association. Ever since, Europe has been more structured and perhaps played the second-most effective defense of any team in the tournament.
“We felt like we were controlling the play and doing a lot of good things and we were down 2-1”, Crosby said. He made a sprawling save on Marchand’s tip-in attempt early in the third but was beaten cleanly when the Canadian forward fired a snapshot from the slot moments later.
Russian Federation was not in a position to come back in a game in which it gave up more than twice as many shots as it put on the Price-protected net until pulling their goalie late to add an extra skater in a nothing-to-lose attempt to get back in the game. The score stood after a video review.
“Maybe we weren’t as good as we thought we were because we hadn’t played better than our first game (against Russia)”, Hjalmarsson said.
The loss may end up being the last time a pair of aging standouts, Lundqvist and Daniel Sedin, play for Sweden.
Canada broke through for good 76 seconds into the third period on Marchand’s second goal of the game. Evgeny Kuznetsov made it 2-1 at 16:24 after he batted a puck out of the air near the net and past Price. “I think their strength is a little bit that no one believes in them”. We would speak about hockey nonstop together, and it was the best coaching clinic I could go through, with Claude Julien, Ken Hitchcock, Lindy Ruff and Mike Babcock.
Sweden’s Erik Karlsson tied it with 4:32 left in the third, setting the stage for Tatar’s overtime victor. The Senators defenseman shot the puck from just inside the blue line on the right side of the rink, and Predators defenseman Roman Josi (Switzerland) swiped at the puck with his stick and redirected it into his own net. Because if you look at your average cup-winning NHL team, it’s not like the team has national ties to help foster any kind of chemistry.
Slovakian and New York Islander goalie Jaroslav Halak has been as impressive as any player in the tournament, other than Crosby, who has a World Cup-high seven points.
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Dominant in the preliminary round, the Canadians were far and away the better team again on Saturday and remain the tournament’s heavy favourites entering a best-of-three finals matchup against either Sweden or Europe.
