The stars have aligned and I finally have my new passport and at this time tomorrow I'll be 30,000 feet above and halfway to Helsinki. Barring travel delays, I'll see the final preliminary games for both Canada and the US on Tuesday and the entire medal round.
Let me know what kind of information/news/notes you'd like to see here over the next seven days and I'll do my best to deliver. In the meantime, some tidbits for you to chew on...
Team USA is lead by Max Pacioretty who has 10 points (2g, 8a), defenseman Justin Faulk (4g, 3a, +7) and Paul Stastny with six points. Bonus points if you know where each of them played college hockey.
Team Canada is lead by defenseman Duncan Keith with nine points, John Tavares with eight (4g, 4a) and Jordan Eberle with seven points (4g, 3a).
While USA Hockey has been using this tournament for the past couple years as the deep end of the pool - throwing their young guns out there and seeing if they sink or swim - it's a huge change in philosophy for Hockey Canada to do it, but that's just what they've done this year and they've even upped the ante, so to speak, by bringing a guy who is draft eligible in 18-year-old defenseman Ryan Murray (five games, no points).
Even though we have two more days of preliminary games, the cream has already risen to the top and know that Canada and USA have secured a spot in the quarterfinal on Thursday. Finland and Slovakia look good to round out the bracket from Helsinki, but France has an outside shot if they win their games against Belarus and Slovakia.
In Stockholm, Russia and Sweden have secured their place in the quarterfinal. Czech Republic and Norway seem to be joining them with a very outside chance to Latvia. They'd have to beat Denmark and Sweden and hope that either Denmark or Germany can pull an upset and defeat either Norway or Czech Republic respectively.
Speaking of Sweden, they are led by Loui Eriksson and Henrik Zetterburg who each have 10 points and will soon have Nicklas Backstrom to hopefully give their offense a more balanced attack and much needed spark.
Russia will welcome Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin with open arms as they also struggle with balance. They're led by Evgeni Malkin who leads the tournament with 13 points (7g, 6a), Alexander Popov with seven points and Alexander Perezhogin with six. They're not scoring as much as they would be if these games were played on paper, but they're undefeated (including a 7-3 come-from-behind win against Sweden) in large part to the outstanding play of goaltender Semyon Varlamov.
Julie
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