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NHL Week in Review

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NHL Week in Review
by Chris Kober
Hockeytalk.biz

January 4, 2010

WINTER CLASSIC RECAP

Pomp and circumstance, suspense and drama, physicality and speed, emotion and nostalgia; all were on display New Year’s Day in the Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at historic Fenway Park.

The atmosphere was electric from Bobby Clarke and Bobby Orr leading their respective teams out onto the ice and the flyover of a B-2 bomber to the singing of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” late in the third period and the postgame announcement of Team USA’s Olympic roster; but beyond the spectacle, at the center of the celebration there was a game to be played for two very real standings points.

As with any game between the heirs of the Broad Street Bullies and the Big Bad Bruins, tempers were bound to flair and they did. Early in the first Daniel Carcillo and Shawn Thornton dropped the gloves for the first fight in Winter Classic history and in the second period Boston goalie Tim Thomas even got a little acrimonious with Scott Hartnell.

Unfortunately for Thomas his outburst lead to Philidelphia’s lone goal of the game. Thomas rebounded from the gaff, however to become the story of the day, making spectacular saves on several breakaways and odd man rushes to keep his offensively challenged team in the game.

“For a while there I didn’t know if we were going to ever find out how these fans were going to react if we scored a goal,” Boston head coach Claude Julien said in his post game press conference, but the late game heroics of Mark Recchi and Marco Sturm’s overtime game winner sent the fans at Fenway into a frenzy.

The exclamation point on the picturesque day of outdoor hockey was the naming of the American Olympic team, highlighted by a very emotional victory lap for the man of the hour—Flint, Michigan native—Tim Thomas.

CANADA VS. USA FOR GOLD AT
WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS

While the NHL was on center stage at Fenway Park, hockey fans could get a glimpse of the future with the World Junior Championships in full swing, North of the border. The preliminary round had its share of mismatches such as Canada’s 16-0 whitewash of Latvia to open the tournament, but the early blow outs made way for some thrilling contests later in the week.

Canada and the United States had both rolled through their respective preliminary games leading up to their clash on New Year’s Eve. The Americans carried the play and lead for most of the fast paced hard hitting game but Canada rallied from a three goal deficit to force overtime and eventually pulled out the 5-4 win in the shootout.

The victory gave the Canadians a bye to the semifinals where they were expected to play the Russians in a rematch of last year’s thrilling semifinal, but it was not to be as Russia was shocked by Switzerland in the quarterfinals. The Swiss hung in the game thanks to undrafted goaltender Benjamin Conz, who ended the night with fifty saves, until 17-year-old Nino Niederreiter tied the game with only 32 seconds remaining in regulation, and scored the game winner in the waning seconds of overtime. The Swiss Cinderella story ended there though as they fell to Canada 6-0 on Sunday.

The United States faced tough competition from Finland and Sweden in the elimination rounds and looked to be on the ropes in the second against Sweden, but put together a strong third period, winning the game 5-2 and will face Canada in the gold medal game Tuesday.

The Americans have not beaten Canada in World Junior competition since the 2004 final, while the Canadians have won all five gold medals in the intervening years.

After tomorrow’s World Junior final the IIHF will set its sights on Vancouver and now that all 12 teams have released their rosters here are some quick thoughts on each of the big six heading into the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

MEN'S ICE HOCKEY ROSTERS SET
FOR VANCOUVER OLYMPICS

As mentioned before Team USA was announced Friday at the Winter Classic and it is a decidedly new look for the Americans. Gone are the Olympic veterans of the past like Mike Modano, Bill Guerin, Kieth Tkachuk and Doug Weight and in their places young superstars like Patrick Kane, Bobby Ryan, Zach Parise and Phil Kessel. Only three Americans on the 23 man roster have previous Olympic experience and the team’s average age is 26.5. The Americans have a relatively well balanced team, if small and young up front, but their medal hopes will have to rest on red hot Ryan Miller in goal.

On the other side of the coin, Sweden returns 13 of the 23 players from their gold medal run in 2006, including Peter Forsberg. The biggest issue Sweden will have to face in their gold medal defense is injuries. Johan Franzen has been out with a torn ACL since early October and will miss at least one more month; Niklas Kronwall sprained a knee ligament in late November and still has 2 weeks of recovery left; Henrik Zetterberg went out with a separated shoulder in mid December and has since been listed as week to week; just before the Christmas break Daniel Alfredsson went out also with a separated shoulder for 4-6 weeks and there is always the concern over Forsberg’s foot and ankle that kept him from returning to the NHL this year. While all of these players should be ready to go in mid February, having four star players just returning from injury may put excess pressure on Henrik Lundqvist.

Similar to the Swedes, Finland has put together a veteran lineup following up on the success of 2006 when they won the silver. Fifteen Finns who played in Turino will compete this year including the Koivu Brothers, Saku and Mikko, Teemu Selanne and Antero Niittymaki. The greatest strength of the Finnish talent pool is certainly goaltending as is evidenced by the fact that Niittymaki was named the MVP of the tournament four years ago and is not likely to even dress for a game in favor of Calgary’s Mikka Kiprusoff and Niklas Backstrom of the Minnesota Wild.

The Czech Republic won the gold in 1998 on the back of Dominik Hasek and took home the bronze in 2006. Tomas Vokoun returns to the net after filling in for an injured Hasek in Turino as the team will field a solid stable of forwards featuring Patrik Elias, Martin Havlat and Jaromir Jagr. Although there isn’t a lot of buzz around the Czechs for Vancouver that just might be what makes them one of the more dangerous teams in the tournament.

The Russian team is loaded with prime NHL talent—Ovechkin, Malkin, Kovalchuk and Datsyuk to name a few—but that only makes up slightly more than half of their roster; the rest of the Russians heading to Vancouver play their club hockey in their homeland. Six of the nine KHL players on the Russian squad have played at least some time in North America including future hall of famer Sergei Fedorov. The one glaring omission from an NHL perspective on the Russian team has to be Alexei Kovalev. Did Russian GM Vladislav Tretiak leave him off due to his historically inconsistent play, or did it have more to do with the political climate between the NHL and KHL? We will never know, but one thing is for sure, the Russians will score barrels of goals in Vancouver either way, and with Ilya Bryzgalov and Evgeni Nabokov in goal they are heavy contenders for gold.

Finally, Canada has to be considered the favorite to win gold on home soil and for seemingly a year now the pressure has been mounting. The Canadian team is absolutely stacked; any one of their four forward lines could be the first line on an NHL team and one (Heatley, Thornton, Marleau) is. On defense the names like Mike Green, Jay Bouwmeester and Dion Phanuf that were left off the list by GM Steve Yzerman tell you just as much about how great the Canadian blueline is as the players such as Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer and Duncan Keith who were included. In goal Marty Brodeur tops the NHL record books in just about every important goaltending category and will be backed up by Vancouver Canucks’ captain Roberto Luongo and 2009 Stanley Cup champion Marc-Andre Fleury. The only question for the Canadians is if this team of all stars can come together in time to deliver under the pressure of a nation.

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