“This morning… it’s hard”. The final nail in the coffin of Team Czech Republic came on Monday night in a 3-2 OT loss to Team Europe. “It kind of gave us some breathing room”. To make them feel responsible if things go wrong.
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Russian Federation will meet Canada in Saturday’s World Cup of Hockey semifinal after defeating Finland 3-0 in their final group game on Thursday.
Despite having nothing to play for, the USA players actually seemed to play hard. -Czech Pride Bowl was ducking embarrassment.
“It’s going to be like Russian Federation when we play Olympic Games”, Ovechkin said. They know they can play better, and a game against the young Fins could give them that extra boost they need for the semifinals.
A Russian victory would mean that they would face off against Canada, leaving us with a Sidney Crosby-Alex Ovechkin matchup.
“We had a chance to win a bronze medal there, and we didn’t”.
It’s disappointing. It’s nearly to say that we were coasting or don’t care, weren’t representing our countries as well as we could have and for other guys that have worn the jersey, it’s disappointing.
United States of America coach John Tortorella bemoaned his team’s “self-inflicted wounds” following the defeat.
It’s not a lot of fun to watch.
Said Tortorella on Kessels tweet, which implied the former Toronto Maple Leaf should have been on the team: I like Phil.
“Everybody understands that if you score you get so much energy and positive thinking in your team”, Finland head coach Lauri Marjamaki said.
There are plenty of questions heading into tonight’s game.
#3. Besides the scorers you chose to leave behind, seven more of your most talented and exciting players: Auston Matthews, Johnny Gaudreau, Jack Eichel, Brandon Saad, Dylan Larkin, Seth Jones and Shayne Ghostibehere weren’t available to you.
“You could say that”.
Ill be honest: Were not as deep as Canada skill-wise, Tortorella said. We obviously were counting on them to get out of pool play, but they weren’t able to do it. There’s a reason the young guys on North America play a more exciting brand of hockey than this current group of U.S. players. Indeed, as they celebrated following Nathan MacKinnon’s OT victor, the players thought they clinched a spot in the semis. In that situation, you would be better with anyone else that might have been among the list of candidates, even a bench-warmer.
The United States’ poor performance was bound to spark discussion. Price, who allowed two goals over the first two games, will likely be back in net for Canada’s semifinal on Saturday night. The speed of the global game seems to have overtaken graybeards like Parise, Pavelski, Ryan Kesler and David Backes, all of whom are 32.
I already spent a few thousand words on trying to examine what went wrong for this team and what needs to be fixed, but that was before things went from disastrous to full-on nuclear meltdown levels.
“Looking back, all of us probably really regretted what happened that game”.
Hjalmarsson has played a key role on Sweden’s blue line.
One of the truly disappointing things about this USA roster was that it could not dig itself out of a hole. Even before the puck dropped in Toronto these players knew that if they failed EVERYONE would blame Tortorella and they would not be held accountable.
At 13:57 there was a huge scrum in the front, knocking down Bishop and resulting in an own-goal by Suter, which was awarded to Milan Michalek. It’s stunning when you consider that the American talent pool – even without the young players that were ineligible due to Team North America – is about as deep as it’s ever been in the National Hockey League.
“We had 20 scoring chances, they had nine”, Tortorella said. “I just wish he didn’t say anything because it makes him look bad”.
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“So we thought about playing other ways”. “We’re all disappointed, but we’re still sticking together”.
