Month: December 2018

The USA-Sweden game last night at the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championship was going to be a hard act to follow. And with only two games today, it was probably not going to be equaled. Although the drama was not quite the same as last night’s last minute heroics for the US, the Switzerland versus Russia game seemed to include a little bit of everything else.

Akira Schmid got the start in Vancouver and he made 34 saves. Russia won the game 7-4 however.

The game started off on a strange foot as Switzerland’s Marco Lehmann scored just 49 seconds into the first period. The goal was reviewed by the IIHF to check for goalie interference, but the call on the ice stood: we had a good goal. The Swiss had immediately jumped out to the 1-0 lead.

Valentin Nussbaumer would make it 2-0 at the 9:06 mark to really put the Swiss in the driver’s seat. Less than ten minutes in and the Swiss had seemingly taken control of the game. It was a good position to be in.

However, Kirill Marchenko would cut the lead in half and get Russia back into things when he scored at 14:27 of the first period. This goal seemed initially to be offsides, however while the Russian skater did enter the zone before the puck, he had firm control of it behind him, therefore there was no offsides and the goal counted.

The second period, one that will go down as one of the wildest periods I have personally ever seen in a hockey game, started innocently enough. Lehmann scored his second of the game to give the Swiss a 3-1 lead. He chipped the puck over the shoulder of Russian goaltender Danil Tarasov.

That goal was 5:46 into the period and 21 seconds after that, Dmitri Samorukov scored unassisted to make it 3-2.

Then a pretty scary moment as, on a 2-on-1, a Swiss skater went crashing skates first into Tarasov. He seemed to be clutching his left leg and the worst was thought: that he got cut by the skate blade. He was checked out by the Russian trainer, however, and was okay. He remained in the game.

A few minutes following that, Grigori Denisenko scored for the Russians to tie things up at three on the power play. Then the real weirdness began.

Switzerland’s Lehmann was hauled down on a breakaway not once, but twice. The officials got together and initially signaled that there would be a penalty shot for the first trip and a two-minute minor penalty for the second. However, it was then ruled that the Swiss would get two penalty shots instead. It was a strange call, as really only the trip where Lehmann was in the clear should have been the penalty shot, but was a moot point anyway as Switzerland missed both penalty shots.

As if that was not weird enough, with Russia still on a power play from before the penalty shots (Sandro Schmid was off for high sticking for Switzerland), Ivan Muranov was caught butt-ending a Swiss player in the midsection. He got a five minute major for butt-ending and a game misconduct and was thrown out. Now, with the Russian power play expiring, the Swiss would be on the power play for a little more than four minutes.

However, it was the Russians who took control on that penalty kill. Kirill Slepets scored unassisted and shorthanded off of a turnover in the Swiss zone to make it 4-3 Russia. From there, Russia basically opened the floodgates.

Alexander Alexeyev scored at the 6:38 mark to give the Russians a 5-3 lead. Switzerland’s Yannick Bruschweiler notched one 35 seconds after that to cut the lead to 5-4 and pull the Swiss back into it, but that was as close as they got.

Pavel Shen scored through Schmid’s five hole to make it 6-4 and Vitali Kravtsov scored 1:08 later to make it 7-4, which was our final. Switzerland pulled Schmid with about two minutes to go in the game in an attempt to get things going, but to no avail.

It was a very entertaining game and takes us into tomorrow. The Swiss are done with preliminary play, finishing with a 1-0-1-2 record and four points in four games in Group A. They had 11 goals for and 12 against for a goal differential of minus-1.

Tomorrow, the Swedes kick off the day against Kazakhstan. Then the big one as the Russians faceoff with the Canadians and then the night cap as Team USA faces the Finns. We will have coverage of all of that here for you as well as the Devils-Canucks game at 1 PM.

It was another busy day in British Columbia at the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championships with four games involving Devils prospects on the docket. Let’s get to it.

In the early game at Rogers Arena, Switzerland notched a shutout against Denmark. Akira Schmid did not play in this game as Luca Hollenstein made 21 saves on the Danes, who continue to struggle in this tournament. Philipp Kurashev had a hat trick for the Swiss and Simon le Coultre added one to give the host Swiss the 4-0 win. Switzerland will next take on the Russians on Sunday (December 30) in Group A action.

Moving over to Victoria and the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, Finland defeated Slovakia 5-1. Aarne Talvitie had an assist on the game’s second goal by Santeri Virtanen, which made it 2-0 Finland. The Finnish captain’s stat line read an assist, two penalty minutes (a tripping penalty 15:40 into the second period that resulted in the lone Slovakian goal of the game by Milos Roman less than a minute into the penalty), a shot on goal and a plus-1 rating all in 16:30 of total ice time. Finnish goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 22 saves on 23 Slovak shots in taking the win. Finland’s next opponent is the United States on New Year’s Eve in what will be the late game on that night. If you are planning to stay up, you could catch some World Junior action between Team USA and the Aarne Talvitie and the Finns if you so choose on the NHL Network here in the States. You could do worse, that’s for sure.

In the later game in Group A in Vancouver, Canada took on the Czech Republic and the Canadians just continued to roll in the tournament. They defeated the Czechs 5-1 to remain atop Group A. Ty Smith had an assist (on Brett Leason’s goal at 11:32 of the first period, the one that would go down as the game winner), two shots on goal and an even plus/minus rating in 9:48 of total ice time.

In addition to the Leason goal, Maxime Comtois, Alexis Lafreniere, MacKenzie Entwistle and Morgan Frost all had tallies for Team Canada. Ondrej Machala had the lone goal for the Czechs. Canada chased Czech goalie Jiri Patera in favor of Jakub Skarek in the third period. Next up, the Canadians look for a test on New Year’s Eve when they take on Russia in the conclusion of Group A preliminary round play.

The final game on the slate saw Sweden putting their prelim winning streak on the line against the Americans in Victoria. It was a clash of the top two teams in Group B. Both teams with six points, but the US leading on goal differential coming into the game plus-7 to Sweden’s plus-4.

Sweden took the lead early and often with Filip Westerlund, Rickard Hugg, Emil Bemstrom and Erik Brannstrom scoring over the first two periods and early into the third to give them the 4-0 lead. But the US would not die so easily. They scored three straight from Mikey Anderson on the power play, Ryan Poehling and another from Poehling with the goaltender pulled.

That set up a dramatic play with 22.8 seconds remaining where Poehling went to the net and finished off a natural hat trick to tie it at four. The Americans had miraculously come back to tie things up after being left for dead all evening. The Swedes’ streak was on the line as we headed to overtime.

US goalie Kyle Keyser made a huge save early in the OT session (which is five minutes of three-on-three for the prelim round) but the Swedes were opportunistic and Adam Boqvist won it off a 2-on-1 with 1:09 left in the OT to preserve the Swedish streak at 46 straight prelim wins.

Fabian Zetterlund ended the game with one shot on net and an even plus/minus rating in 12:54 of ice time. The Swedes also take over first place in Group B on points. The Swedes will now take on Kazakhstan on New Year’s Eve.

Overall it was an exciting day of action at the World Juniors. The USA-Sweden finish is one that has to be seen to be believed and it is just too bad that the Americans could not complete the comeback in overtime.

We will see you tomorrow here with more coverage of the 2019 World Junior Championships.