The trio had 14 of Canada’s 47 shots on goal in the game, dominated in the possession game and continually kept Russia’s defense on their heels. There were generations in this country who grew up with the Russians behind a wall, and that made Russia’s hockey players mystical, mysterious.
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The Canadians controlled the puck possession and had the majority of chances on goal through the first 30 minutes but couldn’t score outside of Crosby’s first-period goal.
It didn’t feel like a legitimate surge, considering Team Russia went almost the first 10 minutes of the second period without a shot before scoring on Carey Price, but Canada was nonetheless trailing on Saturday night. They’re scrappy, and basically no one likes them.
Russian Federation scored back-to-back in the second period to take the lead.
Carey Price was up to some of his usual sneaky antics in the game, and it was glorious. Mind you, heading into Saturday, Canada was leading the tournament with a 20 per cent success rate with the man advantage, having scored two goals on 10 attempts.
With a team as good as Canada, your goalie has to be sharp because you can’t hope to stop them. The Russians weathered the storm, and would eventually break the tie themselves.
They just have to take care of business, is all.
But Canada was on a mission. “It’s always special to play Russian Federation, all the legends of the game that come from that country”. Marchand scored twice, including the go-ahead goal in the third period that sparked a barrage in the first half of the final frame. Though players on both sides didn’t think that offered much insight into Saturday’s matchup, the formula was there for how Canada could fall on Saturday: Sergei Bobrovsky turned aside 45 of 48 shots to give his squad a chance.
With NHL training camps starting to get underway, Trouba has informed the Jets he will not attend camp and would like a trade so he can have “the opportunity to reach his potential as a right shot NHL defensemen”. Because of him alone, Russian Federation remained in the game through the second period.
A two goal lead was nice, but they were still looking to add to it. Four and a half minutes later Corey Perry retrieved a rebound and put it between his legs before he roofed it. Crosby has seven points (2-5) in those games (1-2 in this one) while Ovechkin has none.
Behind an ambush in the third period, the Canadians survived a scare from Russian Federation and advanced to the best-of-three finals with a 5-3 victory in the semifinals.
Sidney Crosby was nothing short of magnificent.
Those were Marchand’s first two goals of the tournament and they could not have come at a better time. “If you look at their team, they have some pretty special players, a lot of talent, a lot of skill, exciting guys to watch and it’s great hockey”. A veteran team many pundits picked to finish last, they beat the United States of America 3-0 in their opener, before beating the Czechs in overtime to lock up the number-two spot in Pool A. Even though Europe has emerged as a contender with an experienced squad, they lack the mobile, elite, puck-moving blueline that they would need to defeat the Swedes.
I would use an aggressive forecheck against the Russians and put even more stress on what appears to be their team weakness. He stopped 16 of 17 shots in the first frame, continuing his stifling efforts into the second. He wasn’t letting in any stinkers, so there wasn’t much to legitimately criticize at all. For two periods, it looked like Sergei Bobrovsky was going to withstand the relentless onslaught and give his team a chance to steal the game. Perhaps Russia has some new blood coming through that will make an impactful difference, but that isn’t going to help on September 24th of 2016. This game could have been very ugly, and Canada clearly deserved to move on in this tournament.
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Team Canada making it to the World Cup of Hockey finals isn’t surprising given the way they’ve steamrolled the competition so far.
