Team Canada has been catching wind of the style the Americans plan to use in the World Cup of Hockey, and on Friday night at Nationwide Arena, will find out what its hockey rivals have in store. With players still wanting to represent their countries – this could be a match made in heaven.
Advertisement
The Scandinavian rivals meet again on Saturday in another warmup for the tournament which starts on September 17 in Toronto.
The clock is ticking on Team Canada before this all gets real.
In their final matches ahead of the tournament that starts next weekend in Toronto, the Czechs will play Team North America while Russian Federation faces Canada on Wednesday.
But it’s easy to say the USA needed this “win” more than Canada considering what went down in 2014 the last time these two nations squared off in the winter five-ringed spectacular. “We just want to keep getting better and we have another good test (against Russia) before the tournament”.
How would a 39-year-old Zdeno Chara feel about not get an opportunity to play for Slovakia one more time?
Russian Federation will play Finland, Sweden and the North American team in Group B. “I think that was the difference”, said Duchene, who gave the club a 4-2 lead at 12:11 of the second. As much as I would love to see Team USA win, I just don’t know if it will happen.
There is rust coming out of the summer, were hitting goalposts, missing open nets and everything was there (Friday) but the finishing. It’s great to have an embarrassment of riches in the defensive positions, and that’s what the United States has in abundance. This tournament, played at the Air Canada Centre, is expected to be physical.
The two hockey powers play their final pre-tournament game tonight. It’s not going to be fair to the other guys.
“Let’s face it: They’re the benchmark and that’s what you’ve got to look at if you’re going to win this thing, generally”, said Lombardi.
“We felt we did a lot of good things (Friday)”. We know hes a really good player, great kid, weve just got to get a bit more out of him..
Weve got some work to do, Tortorella said after practice Monday.
“Everybody talks about puck possession, but sometimes puck possession is you don’t have the puck, you put it into an area to get it back and I don’t think we did a good enough job there”, said Tortorella, who won the Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning while preaching a “safe is death” mantra. “That’s just the lay of the land of this tournament: I can’t wait”. It has been that way since the fall of the Soviet Union (OG Team Europe) and I don’t see it changing…ever.
Advertisement
MacKinnon, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Johnny Gaudreau scored in a 4:43 span of the second period for the team made up of Canadian and U.S players age 23 or under as of October 1. You cant, youve got to get guys into situations where you think theyre going to produce for you.
