BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA – Possibly the biggest news of the day has been the fact that Russia has called up Alexander Ovechkin for the World Championships and Ovechkin will be joining the Russian team in two days time. After the Washington Capitals suffered a shock exit at the hands of Tampa Bay Lightning, Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Semion Varlamov were all available to the Russian national team, but the Russians only extended the invitation to Ovechkin.
These are the third consecutive World Championships for Ovechkin who won gold with Russia in Canada and finished second behind Czech Republic at last years’ World Championships in Germany. It is unclear whether Swede Nicklas Backstrom will be available for Sweden and whether German hockey icon, Marco Sturm will join in on Germany’s impressive start at the World Championships.
Yesterday’s games marked the end of the preliminary round and the qualifying the relegation rounds are also complete. The German’s and the Czech’s took the most points with them to the qualification round with six points each. Meanwhile the Canadians took 5 points to the qualification round after the Swiss team took the Canadians to the overtime.
As of today the participating countries can extend their rosters to 25 players so it will be interesting to see whether any of the countries will look to add any talent to their rosters as they move forward.
For the Finns, the preliminary round ended in somewhat of a disappointment after they lost to the Czech Republic in their final game of the group stages. The Czechs eliminated the Finns from last years’ competition after a penalty shoot-out and went on to win the tournament and lift the World Championships.
The Finns fell victim to too many penalties through reckless play and if it wasn’t for goalie Petri Vehanen, the score could’ve been even worse for the Finns. The Czech goalie, Atlanta’s Ondrej Pavelec, held on to his shoot out until the final 19 seconds when Finland’s Anssi Salmela unloaded a slap shot past the keeper.
The Finns tried a gutsy move at the end as they pulled their goalie with over two minutes left to play, despite their efforts, the Czechs were left without an empty net goal.
The Finns will need to work hard on their finishing and scoring touch if they want to play further into the tournament.
The qualification round groups are as follow:
Group E
Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Denmark
Group F
Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, Norway, France
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