Tinner
01-04-2006, 12:24 PM
Cam Cole
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The crowd at GM Place didn't quite know how to take it. Was Team Canada playing badly, or ...? How could Team Finland have this much energy left after Monday's 1-0 overtime, inch-by-inch, tooth-pulling marathon against Sweden? Shouldn't goalie Tuukka Rask have been keeling over from exhaustion, facing another barrage of Canadian rubber just 20 hours after his 53-save robbery of the Swedes?
Why weren't the Canadians, on home ice, with the softer side of the medal-round draw, romping to a lopsided semifinal win, cruising into Thursday night's gold medal final of the 2006 IIHF world junior hockey championships? It wasn't supposed to be this hard, was it? Even if the Finns are, and have ever been, reliably, cussedly difficult opponents?
And then, like a drop of blood wrung from a stone, a puck squeezed past Rask.
Late in the first period, Medicine Hat Tigers defenceman Kris Russell, trailing a 2-on-2 break, skated into Dustin Boyd's heads-up pass and slid it underneath the sprawling Finnish keeper.
A heartbreaker.
And in the dying moments of the second period, another dagger, this one by Kelowna Rockets forward Blake Comeau, after Rask had made two saves and no one cleared the rebound.
In the end, it was 4-0 for Canada, but this was no romp. This was solid, workmanlike, diligent, stingy. Like the team itself, like the every-night game plan of Brent Sutter's blue-collar squad, it was a triumph of hard work, positional play and responsibility.
And Thursday afternoon, all those qualities will be put to the test when, for the fourth time in five years, Canada will play Russia for the world junior gold. The Russians, who were popular winners Tuesday night of a chippy, occasionally brutal 5-1 thrashing of Team USA, might not find the citizenry so generous Thursday.
The last time they won gold was in 2003 at Halifax, beating Canada 3-2 in the final.
After posting a perfect 6-0 record in last year's tournament, Canada's fifth straight victory in this year's event made Sutter the winningest Team Canada coach in the junior team's history.
"We have played two games against Canada, and scored one goal, on a power play -- so I have to say, the better team is going to the final," said Finland's coach, Hannu Aravirta, whose troops took every shot the physical Canadians dished out, and gave it back just as hard, but finally ran out of gas.
"We didn't put pressure the way we expected. No dangerous chances," said Aravirta. "We gave up a very bad goal at end of the first, and also at the end of the second, and I think Canada has only six goals against in the whole tournament. And so, for a pretty tired team after yesterday's game, it was tough to come back in the third period.
"They played with great discipline, and a tough style."
And with solid goaltending from Justin Pogge, who turned aside all 19 shots, including a second-period breakaway by Finnish captain Petteri Wirtanen, for his second shutout of the tournament.
"When you think about it, it was a 1-0 hockey game when they had the breakaway from the blueline and Pogge made the save," said Sutter, with no trace of emotion. In his mind, the job is not yet done.
"It was a hard-fought game."
Team Canada winger Michael Blundin opened the game with an exact replica of the helmet-rattling hit he made on Erkka Leppanen behind the Finnish net, 22 seconds into the teams' round-robin game on Boxing Day -- same perpetrator, same victim, same time elapsed, different result. With an American referee, Brian Thul, manning the whistle this time instead of Czech Milan Minar, there was no charging call.
But if the legs were moving, the hands weren't. The Canadians looked tight, Rask wasn't having to be inordinately great to keep them off the scoreboard -- and as the period wore on, you wondered if perhaps the Finns might just be able to hang around long enough for the hosts to get even tighter.
But Russell's goal loosened the collars, and though the Finns' stubborn refusal to go away had the sellout crowd of 18,630 shaking its collective head, Comeau's late goal with 62 ticks left in the second period finally allowed Canada to breathe.
"That's the way our team plays every night," said Russell. "They come out and wear guys down."
But it was a subdued, purposeful group of Canadian players that faced the media afterwards.
"In Canada, in hockey, silver is not in the vocabulary," said bruising forward Ryan O'Marra. "We're going in with one goal, and it's the same goal we've had from Day 1."
It didn't seem to be such a realistic goal, at the outset, with not one of the 22 players on the roster having played in last year's 6-1 gold-medal win over Russia. But it has seemed less and less outlandish as the tournament has worn on.
"I don't think we've overachieved, not at all," said 17-year-old Jonathan Toews of the U of North Dakota. "We don't have as many top prospects and stars as they did last year, but we are a team. We've had the same mentality the whole tournament. We've set little goals every day as it's gone on, and we've achieved every one of them.
"Now we just have one goal left."
"I know I've been a stuck record about that," said Sutter, "but it's what got us to today: worrying about what we have that day, and not thinking any further ahead than that."
If they are the most improbable of the five consecutive Canadian teams who've made it to the championship game, said checking forward Tommy Pyatt, "we don't feel like that. People always thought the U.S. and Russians would be right there. I'm sure some people are surprised we are in the gold-medal game.
"But in our room? Nobody's surprised."
ccole@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The crowd at GM Place didn't quite know how to take it. Was Team Canada playing badly, or ...? How could Team Finland have this much energy left after Monday's 1-0 overtime, inch-by-inch, tooth-pulling marathon against Sweden? Shouldn't goalie Tuukka Rask have been keeling over from exhaustion, facing another barrage of Canadian rubber just 20 hours after his 53-save robbery of the Swedes?
Why weren't the Canadians, on home ice, with the softer side of the medal-round draw, romping to a lopsided semifinal win, cruising into Thursday night's gold medal final of the 2006 IIHF world junior hockey championships? It wasn't supposed to be this hard, was it? Even if the Finns are, and have ever been, reliably, cussedly difficult opponents?
And then, like a drop of blood wrung from a stone, a puck squeezed past Rask.
Late in the first period, Medicine Hat Tigers defenceman Kris Russell, trailing a 2-on-2 break, skated into Dustin Boyd's heads-up pass and slid it underneath the sprawling Finnish keeper.
A heartbreaker.
And in the dying moments of the second period, another dagger, this one by Kelowna Rockets forward Blake Comeau, after Rask had made two saves and no one cleared the rebound.
In the end, it was 4-0 for Canada, but this was no romp. This was solid, workmanlike, diligent, stingy. Like the team itself, like the every-night game plan of Brent Sutter's blue-collar squad, it was a triumph of hard work, positional play and responsibility.
And Thursday afternoon, all those qualities will be put to the test when, for the fourth time in five years, Canada will play Russia for the world junior gold. The Russians, who were popular winners Tuesday night of a chippy, occasionally brutal 5-1 thrashing of Team USA, might not find the citizenry so generous Thursday.
The last time they won gold was in 2003 at Halifax, beating Canada 3-2 in the final.
After posting a perfect 6-0 record in last year's tournament, Canada's fifth straight victory in this year's event made Sutter the winningest Team Canada coach in the junior team's history.
"We have played two games against Canada, and scored one goal, on a power play -- so I have to say, the better team is going to the final," said Finland's coach, Hannu Aravirta, whose troops took every shot the physical Canadians dished out, and gave it back just as hard, but finally ran out of gas.
"We didn't put pressure the way we expected. No dangerous chances," said Aravirta. "We gave up a very bad goal at end of the first, and also at the end of the second, and I think Canada has only six goals against in the whole tournament. And so, for a pretty tired team after yesterday's game, it was tough to come back in the third period.
"They played with great discipline, and a tough style."
And with solid goaltending from Justin Pogge, who turned aside all 19 shots, including a second-period breakaway by Finnish captain Petteri Wirtanen, for his second shutout of the tournament.
"When you think about it, it was a 1-0 hockey game when they had the breakaway from the blueline and Pogge made the save," said Sutter, with no trace of emotion. In his mind, the job is not yet done.
"It was a hard-fought game."
Team Canada winger Michael Blundin opened the game with an exact replica of the helmet-rattling hit he made on Erkka Leppanen behind the Finnish net, 22 seconds into the teams' round-robin game on Boxing Day -- same perpetrator, same victim, same time elapsed, different result. With an American referee, Brian Thul, manning the whistle this time instead of Czech Milan Minar, there was no charging call.
But if the legs were moving, the hands weren't. The Canadians looked tight, Rask wasn't having to be inordinately great to keep them off the scoreboard -- and as the period wore on, you wondered if perhaps the Finns might just be able to hang around long enough for the hosts to get even tighter.
But Russell's goal loosened the collars, and though the Finns' stubborn refusal to go away had the sellout crowd of 18,630 shaking its collective head, Comeau's late goal with 62 ticks left in the second period finally allowed Canada to breathe.
"That's the way our team plays every night," said Russell. "They come out and wear guys down."
But it was a subdued, purposeful group of Canadian players that faced the media afterwards.
"In Canada, in hockey, silver is not in the vocabulary," said bruising forward Ryan O'Marra. "We're going in with one goal, and it's the same goal we've had from Day 1."
It didn't seem to be such a realistic goal, at the outset, with not one of the 22 players on the roster having played in last year's 6-1 gold-medal win over Russia. But it has seemed less and less outlandish as the tournament has worn on.
"I don't think we've overachieved, not at all," said 17-year-old Jonathan Toews of the U of North Dakota. "We don't have as many top prospects and stars as they did last year, but we are a team. We've had the same mentality the whole tournament. We've set little goals every day as it's gone on, and we've achieved every one of them.
"Now we just have one goal left."
"I know I've been a stuck record about that," said Sutter, "but it's what got us to today: worrying about what we have that day, and not thinking any further ahead than that."
If they are the most improbable of the five consecutive Canadian teams who've made it to the championship game, said checking forward Tommy Pyatt, "we don't feel like that. People always thought the U.S. and Russians would be right there. I'm sure some people are surprised we are in the gold-medal game.
"But in our room? Nobody's surprised."
ccole@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2006