OT – IIHF World Junior Championship update and Michigan Hockey player notess
The World Junior hockey championship is being held in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Moncton, New Brunswick. Both towns have Junior Hockey leagues and the stands have been mostly full and very vocal. Great venues as the surrounding areas are full of hockey fans (hint hint NCAA Hockey planners).
The US is in Group B with Finland, Switzerland, Slovakia, and Latvia. Going into the final games, Finland lead Group B with 7 points, followed by the US and Swiss each with 6 points. US played Finland in the final game – yesterday at 4:00 when something else happened – and won 6-2. Michigan player Luke Hughes had a goal and assist. (summary here: https://teamusa.usahockey.com/news_article/show/1253263). With the win, they finished first in Group B. Michigan also has Dylan Duke, Seamus Casey, Rutger McGroarty, and Gavin Brindley representing the red, white, and blue.
The US will face off against a weak German team that finished with 3 points in Group B. Austria, also in Group B, was held scoreless in all their games – until they played Germany. Once Austria scored, the aforementioned crowd went nuts!
Team Canada finished second in Group A with 9 points. I was watching NHL Network highlights after their first game and the guy on set was falling off his chair in excitement. “They tried two Michigan’s… Canada tried two Michigan’s in this game!!” In the highlights, each attempt was easily thwarted by the Czechia players. It appears that they knew Canada would try this as the NHL guy showed a statistic that the Canadian’s attempt a Michigan once every 60 shots. Canada lost that game 5-2 due in part to sloppy play and a stupid uncalled-for 5 minute major penalty that allowed Czechia to put the game away.
Michigan Hockey is represented by Adam Fantilli on Team Canada. This is the first time that Michigan has sent 6 players to the World Juniors.
Playoffs start on Monday. The US/Germany game is at 5:00 EST and is aired on the NHL Network. If they win, the US will play the winner of the Canada vs Slovakia match-up. FWIW, Slovakia beat the US 6-3 in the preliminary round.
For more info, here's the IIHF website: https://www.iihf.com/en/events/2023/wm20
January 1st, 2023 at 12:23 PM ^
Glad to see someone posted this.
I'm currently sitting at Phoenix Airport getting ready to board a flight to Moncton for the games tomorrow and from there I'll be heading to Halifax for the rest of the tournament before flying home to California.
January 1st, 2023 at 1:30 PM ^
Enjoy! I thought this might make a nice distraction!!
January 1st, 2023 at 3:39 PM ^
It helps....but only about as much as a baby aspirin helps a gunshot wound.
January 1st, 2023 at 12:26 PM ^
Brindley has played well in the minutes I have been watching. Connor Bedard is making history, and takes his whole line, which includes precocious NHLer Shane Wright, to another level. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a dark shadow to an historic moment in hockey. We are seeing the effect of you tube in the juniors as well. These guys are watching McDavid and Makar streams. A Slovakian player tried a one handed backhand in a shootout that was all McDavid like.
January 1st, 2023 at 3:07 PM ^
If the World Juniors are the future, then I'm glad we bailed out of the GLI because it just doesn't make any sense to play in it. Now we have to work on the B1G so we don't play conference games short of players.
January 1st, 2023 at 3:18 PM ^
The Michigan player that was sick a few months ago and in a coma - is he Ok?
January 1st, 2023 at 7:03 PM ^
Steven Holtz wasn't in a coma that I heard, just on a ventilator for a few days in late-mid November, and he got discharged.
January 1st, 2023 at 6:04 PM ^
Can someone tell me when the AP style guide or something else happened when we started referring to "Czechia" in stories and not "Czech Republic"? I went on a 60 min wiki deep dive trying to see if there was some act of parliament or a presidential decree from the Czech government requesting the change in common reference, but didn't see a specific instance. From what I can tell, "Czechia" has always been an appropriate reference to the country, but I can't for the life of me remember anything post-liberation without using "Czech Republic" (CZE) as the referenced country name in English language writing.
January 1st, 2023 at 7:07 PM ^
According to the World Atlas, "On April 14, 2016, Czechia was adopted as the official short name of the country. It entered into the United Nations UNTERM and UNGEGN databases on July 5, 2016. Maps on Google showing the Czech Republic were replaced with Czechia instead in January 2017."
January 1st, 2023 at 8:14 PM ^
I’m just happy I didn’t write ‘Check’ in the OP 🤣
January 2nd, 2023 at 8:32 AM ^
Arrived in Moncton at 1130 PM last night. I'll be at the Sweden-Finland and USA-Germany games. Apparently the Moncton games are much less popular than the ones in Halifax as I was able to easily secure tickets on the glass for both games.
I went to this same tournament in August and USA lost their quarterfinal matchup, so here's hoping for a better result.
January 2nd, 2023 at 8:46 PM ^
Great to hear! Finland exited early; win or go home. Hope the US gets past the winner of CAN/SVK.
January 2nd, 2023 at 9:36 PM ^
That was a great game.
USA looked great in the 11-1 win, but Germany is not Canada. Canada also beat them by 10 goals so it should be an interesting game...but hopefully we beat them by a dozen.
January 4th, 2023 at 11:33 PM ^
Went to the Canada vs USA game. USA takes a 2-0 lead in the first 10 minutes and then it's all downhill from there losing 6-2.
USA had 2 goals disallowed for goaltender interference after the replay. The video boards didn't show the replays so I can't really say if I agree with the call or not.
USA outshot them and you could argue outplayed them, but the final score is what counts.
For what it's worth, the ice in Halifax appeared to be trash and the puck was bouncing all over the place, players seemed to loose footing quite often, and there was also a delay to repair the ice in the first period.
I get that Canada wanted to host the tournament in Atlantic Canada but using a non-NHL arena seems like a bad option - particularly as this tournament isn't that long and they could've made it work with an NHL arena and they could've easily sold way more tickets (the game was sold out and resale tickets were $500+ for the cheapest seats).
I also don't like the design of this arena at all. I sat in the "upper" section (it's just one bowl) and there's this support beam or something all the way around that makes it impossible to see the scoreboard. They've got TV monitors on the board, but it's rather annoying.
I must also say that the Canadian fans are very into hockey (not that that's a surprise). I would be surprised if there were more than 50-100 American fans at the game which is a bit disappointing.
I'll be at the bronze medal match tomorrow and hopefully we win something. I will not be at the gold medal match as I don't feel like paying $800+ for a ticket.
It's a shame this tournament can't be a week later because I would like to make going an annual tradition, but it is right at the peak of bowl season and with next year's tournament being in Sweden, that could be a bit of a challenge as missing our bowl game is a non-starter (and I neither want nor expect a bowl game in mid-December).
January 5th, 2023 at 8:23 PM ^
Team USA manages to win the bronze.
Crazy game - they blew a 2-0 and 3-1 lead. They eventually trailed and managed to come back to tie it. Team USA takes a 7-6 lead with 90 seconds to play but concedes the equalizer with 30 seconds to play. Team USA finally pulls out the win in overtime.
I would say the vast majority of the fans were cheering for Sweden. Wasn't a sellout, but about 80% full.
Canada playing the Czechs for Gold and currently lead 2-0 but I didn't get tickets to that and don't want to pay $750+ on the resale market.