We could see two—or, depending on how you look at it, four (if you include Michael DiPietro and Elias Pettersson)—members of the Vancouver Canucks organization head home with medals from the IIHF World Championship.
Quarterfinal day is the most stressful one of the tournament. If a team loses in the semis, it still gets a chance to play for bronze. Lose in the quarters and you go home.
Hi, Finland!
Despite finishing first in Group B and recording convincing wins over both Canada and the U.S., the top-seeded Finns were eliminated by Switzerland in the late game in Herning on Thursday. Captain Raphael Diaz and the rest of the Swiss team played some tight defense, holding the high-scoring Finns to just 24 shots, and booked their ticket to the semifinal off the strength of three goals in four minutes during the second period.
The Swiss team got a boost when Roman Josi and Kevin Fiala joined after the Nashville Predators were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs. Despite the fact that the Preds played right through to the Stanley Cup Final last year, a ton of Nashville players have come over; I guess they really were mentally and physically expecting to play into June again.
In addition to Josi and Fiala:
• Filip Forsberg, Viktor Arvidsson, Mattias Ekholm - Sweden
• Eeli Tolvanen - Finland
• Nick Bonino - USA
• Kyle Turris - Canada
With the quarterfinal win, Switzerland will face Canada in the late semifinal game on Saturday in Copenhagen. Saturday's schedule is a little different: puck drop will be at 10:15 a.m. PT. Team USA will take on Sweden in the early game (6:15 a.m. PT).
Other familiar players from NHL rosters that are playing for Switzerland:
• Nino Niederreiter - Minnesota Wild
• Timo Meier - San Jose Sharks
• Mirco Mueller - New Jersey Devils
• Sven Andrighetto - Colorado Avalanche
It's too bad that Sven Baertschi isn't along for this ride. He was expected to join the team before suffering that shoulder injury that caused him to miss the last 17 games of the Canucks season. It would have been fun to see Horvat and Baertschi face off against each other!
In goal on Thursday, the Swiss team was backstopped by Leonardo Genoni, a 30-year-old veteran from Bern who was named best goalie in the Swiss League last year. He's undersized by modern goalie standards—listed at 5'11" and 176 pound—and his numbers in this tournament are nothing special: a 2.75 goals-against average and .901 save percentage.
Former Calgary Flame Reto Berra, who's now in the Anaheim organization, appeared in three games for Switzerland and has the better numbers with a 2-1 record, 2.03 GAA and .917 save percentage. His games ween't necessarily the easy ones, either. He had a 2-0 shutout against Slovakia, a 5-2 win over Belarus and a 4-3 loss to Russia, while Genoni faced Austria, Sweden, France and the Czechs before getting the nod against Finland.
The Swiss team's last appearance in the semifinal at Worlds came in 2013. That year, they beat the U.S. 3-0 to advance to the final, where they fell to Daniel and Henrik Sedin and Loui Eriksson in the gold-medal game. FYI, Roman Josi was named tournament MVP.
Am I burying the lede here? Since the Swiss played in Group A, I didn't get a chance to see them play at all during the preliminary round, so I'm trying to gauge what the Team Canada group will be facing when they try to punch their ticket to the gold-medal game for the fourth straight year.
And I'm curious about how the goalie situation will shake out, because the Russians threw a curve ball when they tagged 22-year-old Ilya Shestyorkin to start against Canada on Thursday. Vasily Koshechkin was the more experienced option; he delivered the gold medal for the Olympic Athletes From Russia at the Olympics in February and had played the majority of the games in Copenhagen during this tournament.
I wouldn't say that Shestyorkin was the reason for Russia's loss to Canada. The game was a nail-biter—a see-saw affair that was decided on a 4-on-3 power play in overtime.
Canada's ineffective power play was a big part of what had held them back during the preliminary round in Herning. As Bill Peters said after the game, it started off well enough but went cold when the coaching staff started experimenting, resulting in a drought that stretched through the last four games of the round robin.
On Thursday, Peters went back to where he started—and it worked. Canada picked up the first two goals on the man advantage when Connor McDavid set up Colton Parayko and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, respectively.
The second goal, midway through the second period, came against the flow of the play. I thought it might deflate the Russians, who had started pressing, but they got one back just a minute later, on a bad defensive breakdown from Bo Horvat's group, and tied the game at two before the second period was over.
In the third, the teams traded goals—giving me the glorious opportunity to re-write my game story a few times. "Pierre-Luc Dubois scored the game winner..." NO, WAIT "Kyle Turris scored the game winner...." NO, that's not going to be what happens, either....
Both times Canada went ahead, the Russians answered back in quick succession. All of a sudden, we were headed for overtime.
In the preliminary round, overtime was the same as in the NHL: five minutes of 3-on-3, followed by the shootout. In the quarterfinal, the overtime extends to 10 minutes at 4-on-4. Not quite as much of a gimme for Canada, where Connor McDavid's skating and speed on the big ice made him almost unstoppable at 3-on-3 earlier in the tournament.
Thankfully, the Canadians were able to capitalize after Kirill Kaprizov was whistled for a slash, 3:35 into overtime. Bill Peters called a time out to organize his group for the do-or-die 4-on-3. The first unit got good pressure, then after the ensuing faceoff, McDavid was able to thread a pass through to the stick of Ryan O'Reilly, who was committed to the dirty area, net-front.
The puck changes direction a little bit as it clips the stick of Russian defender Bogdan Kiselevich. O'Reilly gave McDavid all the credit for the pass, but he also deserves credit for his hand-eye coordination on that crucial play.
Bo Horvat had a pretty quiet game—2-0 on draws with two shots on goal in 10:49 of ice time. He didn't see the ice in overtime.
If you missed it, Nikita Tryamkin was scratched for a second straight game for Russia. I didn't hear anything about an injury, but the Russian team is not exactly forthcoming with English lineup notes.
For me, the indication that Tryamkin may still be open to a future return to the Canucks lies in his social media. He's still using images of himself in Canucks colours on both his Instagram and Twitter pages, and I see him liking posts from his former Canucks teammates—and vice versa.
I also came across this while surfing social this morning:
Glad Elias is feeling good, but that photo really drives home the fact that even thumb surgery is pretty serious business. I'm still holding out hope that he'll be able to join the Canucks at development camp in July.
Back here in Denmark, Bill Peters may need to shuffle his lines a bit against Switzerland on Saturday. Jaden Schwartz left the game with what's said to be an upper-body injury early in the third period. I saw him go to the bench very slowly after getting crunched along the boards; it didn't look good.
Meanwhile, in the late game, Anders Nilsson made 22 saves as Sweden held off the pesky Latvians to advance wth a 3-2 win in Copenhagen. In addition to ruining Denmark's dreams of playing in a quarterfinal game, the Latvians came really close against almost all the top competition in the tournament, pushing both Canada and the U.S. to overtime in the preliminary round (although they were slaughtered 8-1 by Finland).
Bob Hartley is now coaching the Latvians. I overheard him in the mixed zone after one game, passionately describing how proud he was of his group for hanging with the big boys.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored the game winner for Sweden on the power play in the third period, with one-time Canucks prospect Rodrigo Abols in the box serving a hooking penalty. Rickard Rakell was on the ice for both Latvian goals but remains Sweden's primary offensive engine—currently fifth in tournament scoring with 6-7-13 in eight games.
With that, we're caught up from Denmark. Time for me to get off this computer and see a bit of what Copenhagen has to offer!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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