Going into this second game for group B at the World Cup of Hockey, the momentum was all on the North Americans.
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Clinging to a 4-3 lead with under a minute ago while shorthanded, Russian Federation narrowly kept the puck out of the net despite several big chances from North America.
Team North America, a group comprised of the best players from Canada and the USA who are 23 years of age and under as of October 1, rolled over Team Finland 4-1 in their opening game of the World Cup of Hockey.
After Team North America took a 1-0 first period lead on Auston Matthews goal, Russian Federation scored goals on four consecutive shots to chase Pittsburgh’s Matt Murray from the net.
Without Ekblad, the 2014 No. 1 draft pick who’s already an National Hockey League franchise defenseman, North America will need to lean heavier on Morgan Rielly, Colton Parayko, Shayne Gostisbehere in a crucial game Wednesday against Sweden. “Looking back at the game, that was the difference”.
Russia’s plan heading into the game was to play keep-away with North America and not get sucked into a track meet with a team that created scoring chances on the rush. Eventually. And whether it was the Team NA youth or the resolve of their more seasoned opponent, it was a different animal.
“We’re here to play”, Gaudreau said.
Team North America goaltending: Murray let in a bad third goal to Evgeni Kuznetsov and simply didn’t give his team a key save during the rough stretch.
Team North America’s next game will be against Sweden on Thursday (7am NZT), while Russian get a couple days off and will be back Friday to play Finland (7am NZT).
Henrik Lundqvist stopped 45 of 49 shots to get Sweden into the semifinals after a horrendous start by the skaters in front of him. Yeah, well miss him..
Because these are more or less kids, McLellan had offered the appropriate classroom analogy when asked if North America was ready to play with the big boys after an exhibition schedule that really didn’t represent what the World Cup had to offer.
But Russia began to spend some time in the North American end and Namestnikov scored off a fat Murray rebound of a Ivan Telegin shot at 9:29.
“We had no choice”. They had three breakaways, a penalty shot, penalty call with them against us, goal in the net, two goals in the net.
Team Russia’s Andrei Markov (79) and Pavel Datsyuk (13) congratulate Vladimir Tarasenko (91) on his goal during second period World Cup of Hockey action against Team North America in Toronto on Monday, Sept. 19, 2016. That ended Matt Murray’s night and brought on John Gibson. “Going into Wednesday, we have to do our job and win a game”.
“They tried to bounce back but Bobrovsky was unbelievable”, said Russian Federation captain Alex Ovechkin.
North America came out flying. The 18 skaters Finland dressed on Sunday have an average age of 25.5, so the age gap isn’t quite as big with some of these teams as you might think.
“He put on the turbos”, Matthews said of McDavid. If we dont, we feel good about the group that we have..
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“We didn’t get down on ourselves”, forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. And he was also the player that helped kicked off North America’s offensive assault in a one-sided win. “As soon as we opened it up and allowed them to use their speed, that’s where you saw them kind of take over the game”. “It was definitely a pretty good feeling”, said Matthews. You can’t put all of those on Murray due to the way the puck bounced on him a few times, but it also goes to show just how good Russian Federation can be when they have open looks and how the best teams don’t need much to get going.
