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Canucks' prospects Podkolzin & Costmar get rolling at World Jr Championship |
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Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day!
I forgot to send the good wishes in the last blog, so I'll start with that here. I hope Santa was good to you, and that you were able to embrace the warm spirits of the season while keeping safe.
I embraced the spirits of the season on Friday, haha. Hot chocolate with brandy to kick off World Juniors with Slovakia's upset of Switzerland, then mimosas for a plucky effort by the 14 German skaters in their 5-3 loss to Finland, and switching to red wine for the Americans' disappointing showing against Russia.
In a game where highly touted first-rounders Spencer Knight and Yarsolav Askarov got top billing, both goalies were shaky. Knight was pulled after giving up four goals on 12 shots in 32:15 of ice time, with the fourth one coming after he made a terrible giveaway up the side boards, straight onto the stick of Russian forward Ilya Safonov.
Knight did get four games with Boston College earlier this season, in his sophomore year, where he was excellent — with a 1.50 GAA and .955 save percentage. So his poor performance might just be a one-off.
That's the way Team USA coach Nate Leaman was approaching the outing, postgame.
Dustin Wolf, the seventh-round pick of the Calgary Flames, was solid in relief. He stopped all 11 shots he faced, including some tough ones, as the Americans made a late push to get the score to 5-3 before the Russians sealed their result with an empty-net goal.
I'll always have a soft spot for Wolf. He was the fourth-last player taken on Day 2 of the draft in Vancouver. I was finishing up my work and Rogers Arena had largely emptied out. But a huge cheer erupted from the upper bowl when Wolf's name was called — his family and friends had hung in until the bitter end.
The next player taken after Wolf was Arvid Costmar, by Vancouver. He's making his World Juniors debut centring the second line on the Covid-ravaged Swedish team, as they put their 52-game round-robin winning streak on the line on Saturday against a Czech team that looked very good in its pre-tournament game.
Costmar's linemate Simon Holmstrom is legit — a first-round pick by the Islanders in 2019, who spent last season in the AHL. Noel Gunler is a second-round pick from the Carolina Hurricanes this year.
Just as I was wrapping up this blog, Costmar has opened the scoring for Sweden, tapping in a sweet pass from another high-end Swedish prospect, Victor Soderstrom. The goal evens the game at 1-1, 32 seconds after the Czechs opened the scoring with a power-play goal.
Another second-round pick by the Hurricanes, Russia's player of the game was a Vasily P. — but not Canucks prospect and Russian captain Vasily Podkolzin. He had another one of those games that can be interpreted to fit whatever narrative you already believe — leading all forwards with 20:21 of ice time, with two shots on goal and playing on PP1 and on the penalty kill. But he didn't manufacture any significant scoring chances, and he was on the ice for both U.S. goals in the third period, as they narrowed the score from 4-1 to 4-3.
It's always tough to project whether a dominant performance at World Juniors will translate into NHL stardom. Just think back to Cody Hodgson, who edged out John Tavares as top scorer at the 2009 World Junior Championship.
I think the complications of Covid are going to make this year's results even tougher to read. Between the lack of game action for some players this year and the roster and quarantine challenges, we could end up seeing some really wacky results as teams basically use the four-game round-robin to prepare for the all-important quarterfinal knock-out games on Jan. 2.
So, I won't go too deep on Podkolzin yet.
But I do want you to check out this between-periods interview from Vasily Ponomaryov, who was so exuberant as he went down the fist-bump line, and could barely hold back his smile while speaking with Ryan Rishaug — in English — even as he says his line plays 'garbage hockey.'
One of the touchstones of Igor Larionov's coaching approach with the Russians is to encourage his squad to play with joy. Clearly, that message has gotten through to Ponomaryov, the second-round pick of the Carolina Hurricanes from the 2020 draft. He doesn't turn 19 till March and is already in his second season in North America. I have no idea how he learned such good English in highly-francophone Shawinigan, where he plays in the QMJHL. Netflix?
Russia is idle on Saturday. They'll play the late game on Sunday against the Czechs, at 6:30 p.m. PT. Sweden's second game will be Monday at 3 p.m. PT, against Austria.
Meanwhile, back in the NHL — it sounds like all systems are go for Canada's seven teams to play games in their home rinks this season.
So, training camp will begin in a week's time, on Sunday, January 3.
The Canucks are set to open their schedule with back-to-back games in Edmonton on Jan. 13 and 14, then two games in Calgary on Jan. 16 and 18 — first game against Markstrom and Tanev will probably be the late game on Hockey Night in Canada!
Vancouver's first game at Rogers Arena since March 10 will come on Wednesday, January 20: kicking off three games in four nights against Montreal, followed by three-in-four against Ottawa.
The January schedule wraps up in Winnipeg on the 30th — the start of a six-game road trip.
In two and a half weeks, Vancouver will play 11 of its 56 games. Normally, January is pretty light with the All-Star Game and bye weeks. Last year, the Canucks played 11 games in the entire month. Straight into the fire!!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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