Canada just outlasted Russian Federation in the final pre-tournament game with a 3-2 overtime win.
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Crosby is coming off his second Stanley Cup championship run.
Canada have an vast set of defensemen, all accustomed to dealing with the likes of Ovechkin and Malkin, so maybe the lesser known skills of Vadim Shipachyov and Evgenii Dadonov – who teamed up very well with rookie sensation Artemi Panarin prior to the tournament – will be able to stifle the maple leaf-sporting blue liners.
The old Cold War rivalry, which started with the Summit Series in 1972 and probably peaked with the 1987 Canada Cup, was on tap again Saturday night, in the World Cup of hockey semi-final.
The victory puts Canada in the tournament final, which begins Tuesday, where they will play either Sweden or Team Europe, who meet in the second semi-final Sunday afternoon at the Air Canada Centre.
“We didn’t have to do a lot of extra team-building”, Krueger said.
“Yeah, you don’t want to get into penalty trouble against them”, Crosby said.
“He always comes up big in the big games”, Marchand said.
Russian Federation didn’t start off the tournament with the best result, losing 2-1 to Sweden.
And they were even more badly humiliated in Vancouver four years earlier, trounced 7-3 by Canada in the quarter-finals. Of course, a win by Alex Ovechkin and his Russian side on Canadian ice Saturday night would go a long way toward reversing that slide.
“I’m glad you brought that up; it’s a good memory and I’ll be thinking about that tomorrow, for sure”.
“If you look back at the past 10 years, we had some really good results and some that we wish could be done better”, Lundqvist said. Since suffering that Vancouver loss to the USA, the Babcock-coached team has reeled off 13 straight wins in best-on-best competition.
Nikita Zaitsev, who’s yet to play an National Hockey League game, forms an inexperienced top pair with 25-year-old Dmitri Orlov while the second tandem includes an aging Andrei Markov.
With a berth in the final at the World Cup of Hockey on the line Saturday night, Tarasenko is looking forward to renewing the rivalry.
Russian Federation managed only one shot on a pair of power plays, with the Canadians actually coming up with the best opportunities shorthanded, including a pair with Brent Burns in the box for tripping. “A lot of guys went to the world championship; it was nearly a great preview of what our Olympic team would look like [in 2010] so it was tough to lose that one”. With Vladislav Namestikov riding shotgun, Kucherov wisely elected to shoot, and he beat Canada netmider Carey Price to make it a 1-1 game at 8:47. And finally, goalie Sergei Bobrovsky has been outstanding in this tournament, which is no doubt encouraging for the Columbus Blue Jackets, who hope to see him return to this Vezina Trophy ways. “He made a lot of really big saves and really kept them in it, especially in the second [period]”.
Russia: Evgeny Kuznetsov has only one point in the tournament, his electrifying goal against North America, but he’s been very noticeable throughout.
He has since clarified that he meant no disrespect to any of the American players, which I think was obvious enough; all vitriol should be aimed towards the management that put the team together, not to mention the coaching style of one John Tortorella.
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“I know people back home are excited about this tournament because the best players are here, and it’s been great to be a part of this”, Lundqvist said.
