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Canada the underdog in WJC final

by James Mirtle on Jan 5, 2009 3:14 PM CST

You've got to hand it to Sweden. They've made going 5-0 at the world juniors look easy to this point, and after not having won a gold medal at the even in 28 years, they've got a great chance to end that drought.

Tonight, they're the favourites.

For one, goaltender Jacob Markstrom has looked like the second coming of Henrik Lundqvist, as the 18-year-old Swedish netminder has a 1.25 goals-against average heading into tonight's final. (The Panthers are lucky to have him.)

Markstrom's been miles better than Canada's Dustin Tokarski, who gets the start despite allowing a few shaky goals the last two games. (More bad news for the Lightning.)

Sweden's also got Victor Hedman, although he's been battling an injury all tournament. (Some reports have it as being his shoulder, which would explain his lack of physicality in the tournament. Even so, he's a huge body and a great skater and looks like the real deal.)

Even more impressive have been some of the team's more unheralded players, the likes of Erik Karlsson, who has been incredible on the blueline. (The Senators are lucky to have him.)

Sweden even has a good luck charm in assistant coach Peter Sundstrom, the twin brother of former NHLer Patrik Sundstrom (who's perhaps most well-known for holding the record for most playoff points in one game). Both of the Sundstroms were on the team that last won gold for Sweden, way back in 1981, and one imagines Peter would have a pretty inspirational speech to offer up.

As for the Canadians, well, if you're a fan, it's time to hope that coach Pat Quinn has learned something over the past few games and acts accordingly. Several notable players, including captain Thomas Hickey, have not been very good, and in a game of this magnitude, should be shifted out in favour of players who have shown they deserve that ice time.

So far, Quinn's been too loyal, and that could cost them tonight.

Will it be a record-tying fifth straight gold medal for Canada? Or does Sweden end the incredible 28-year streak without winning it all?

It's going to be a good one.

Poll

Who will win the 2009 world junior tournament?

Canada

43 votes

Sweden

44 votes

87 votes | Poll has closed

12 comments | 0 recs |

Canucks send Schneider down

by James Mirtle on Jan 5, 2009 2:34 PM CST

Vancouver just demoted netminder Cory Schneider, who had struggled in his first NHL action. The Canucks picked up Jason LaBarbera last week and he's been decent to this point, and with Curtis Sanford coming back from injury, there was no need to keep Schneider up.

He had been excellent in the AHL and gets some more seasoning with the Moose.

Still no word on when Roberto Luongo returns to action, but I've heard that it'll be at least a few more weeks.

0 comments | 0 recs |

Tavares trade leaks out on day of WJC final

by James Mirtle on Jan 5, 2009 2:21 PM CST

via farm3.static.flickr.com

It's no surprise John Tavares is getting dealt from the Oshawa Generals, as that's been rumoured for months. Oshawa's rebuilding, and they can get a princely sum for a player who'll potentially be the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft this June.

What is a surprise is that the details of the deal are coming out today, a few hours before the gold medal final at the world junior tournament:

John Tavares will soon be a member of the London Knights, sources tell Sportsnet.ca

There has been speculation that Tavares would be traded before the Jan. 10 trade deadline and sources say the deal is done to send the Oshawa Generals forward to London.

The deal won’t be made official until Tavares returns from the world junior tournament.

I doubt this fazes Tavares (heck, he might have already known) but you will see the 'distraction' story come up now that the cat's out of the bag.

I'll have more thoughts on the big game tonight in the near future.

7 comments | 0 recs |

All-star team announcements due this week

by James Mirtle on Jan 5, 2009 1:13 PM CST

The 12 players voted by fans to the starting line-ups for the 2009 NHL All-Star Game soon will have company. The remainder of the 21-man roster of the Western Conference All-Star Team will be announced on Wednesday, January 7. The additional 15 Eastern Conference All-Stars will be announced on Thursday, January 8.

The YoungStars roster will be announced on Friday, January 9.

All announcements will be made exclusively on NHL.com at noon ET each day.

>> league release

Honestly, I get the sense just from readers here and elsewhere that NHL fans have never been more apathetic about the all-star game. People can say they don't care about the game all they want, but this year's fan balloting left a lot of diehards sour on the game — even moreso than they were already.

About the only thing worthwhile about the game at this point is the fact that it honours some of the game's top players. If you don't even have that any more, there's not much left.

18 comments | 0 recs |

The playoff push: 90+ points or bust

by James Mirtle on Jan 5, 2009 11:59 AM CST

For an explanation of what this is, see the year's first playoff push post here.

Western Conference (90 points)

San Jose - 13-30-1
Detroit - 16-27-1
Chicago - 20-25-1
Calgary - 20-23-0
Vancouver - 21-19-1
Anaheim - 22-19-1
Minnesota - 24-19-1
Phoenix - 23-18-1
Edmonton - 25-19-1
Dallas - 25-18-1
Columbus - 25-18-0
Colorado - 25-17-1
Los Angeles - 26-18-0
Nashville - 26-17-1
St. Louis - 28-14-1

Eastern Conference (90 points)

Boston - 14-29-0
Washington - 17-24-1
Montreal - 20-24-0
New Jersey - 20-23-1
Philadelphia - 20-23-0
NY Rangers - 20-21-1
Carolina - 22-19-1
Buffalo - 23-19-1
Pittsburgh - 24-19-0
Florida - 25-18-0
Toronto - 26-17-0
Ottawa - 29-16-0
Tampa Bay - 29-14-0
Atlanta - 29-12-1
NY Islanders - 31-11-0

You can stick a fork in the bottom four teams in the Eastern Conference, with Toronto likely not far behind.

5 comments | 0 recs |

If the playoffs started tonight

by James Mirtle on Jan 4, 2009 2:19 PM CST

A quick look at who would be playing who if, based on projected point totals, the playoff matchups were determined tonight:

Eastern Conference

(1) Boston v. (8) Buffalo
(2) Washington v. (7) Carolina
(3) Philadelphia v. (6) NY Rangers
(4) Montreal v. (5) New Jersey

Western Conference

(1) San Jose v. (8) Edmonton/Minnesota
(2) Detroit v. (7) Phoenix/Anaheim
(3) Calgary v. (6) Anaheim/Phoenix
(4) Chicago v. (5) Vancouver

I included both teams in spots where there was a complete tie (as with the Ducks and Coyotes, for example).

Some great matchups here. Boston is on pace for a 130-point regular season but gets a tough opponent in the Sabres, while two Southeast Division teams would lineup in the Caps and 'Canes.

There's very little separating the third place through sixth place teams in the East, so those games would all be real battles.

In the West, things are very tight from spots six through 14, with just 10 projected points separating them. The Ducks and Coyotes are tied, as are the Oilers and Wild, and Colorado and Columbus are knocking on the door.

You'd have to think San Jose and Detroit come out of the first round given the way they've played, but Anaheim would be a toughie in a seven game series. Chicago likely gets the Northwest or Pacific Division runnerups in a 4-5 battle.

6 comments | 0 recs |

It's Canada versus Sweden for gold

by James Mirtle on Jan 4, 2009 5:30 AM CST

via cache.daylife.com

I feel for all of the American hockey fans out there who generally don't have the access to the world junior tournament that we do in Canada, because it really is some of the best hockey of the year. And it always comes right around the NHL's midseason, when the league's bloated 1,230-game schedule starts catching up with an awful lot of players and the quality of play diminishes.

Saturday night's 6-5 shootout win by the Canadians over Russia was a great example. Canada held four separate leads — 1-0, 2-1, 3-2 and 4-3 — before Russia finally strung two goals together and was up 5-4 in the dying seconds of the game. A miss on a long-range attempt at an empty netter gave Canada one last chance with about 40 seconds left, and they managed to keep the puck in off the faceoff and allow Oilers prospect Jordan Eberle to whack in a goal with 5.4 seconds to spare.

Heady stuff.

After 10 minutes of overtime, the game unfortunately went to a coin flip contest — although having John Tavares doing some of the flipping turns the odds slightly in one's favour, I suppose. Canada scored twice, goaltender Dustin Tokarski stopped two shots and now they're up against Sweden on Monday night.

If you can, make sure you catch that one.

Canada honestly hasn't been all that great in the tournament, but there are only four decent teams this year and one — the Americans — was bumped out by Slovakia the other night. Sweden, however, will be a real test, especially for a team that's struggled in goal and on defence and that could be looking at a couple major lineup tweaks for the finals.

Putting Chet Pickard in goal, for one, isn't out of the question despite the fact he's had to make 23 saves all tournament.

John Tavares and Cody Hodgson were relatively quiet in the semi-final game, and given they have provided a ton of the team's scoring — 14 and 13 points, double almost every other player — getting them going will be key. Sweden is going to stick big man Victor Hedman out there in all key situations, and that'll be the matchup I'm sure we'll all be sick to death of hearing about come Monday night.

It's a battle between the two top players in the 2009 entry draft, and they're sure to go head to head.

Another player who could step up, given he played in the NHL this season, is Alex Pietrangelo. Canadian captain Thomas Hickey has really struggled on the back end and is likely to see more of the bench in the final.

Like Canada, Sweden's undefeated, but their tournament's been more impressive. Big lanky netminder Jacob Markstrom, an 18-year-old Panthers draft pick (31st overall last June), has allowed half as many goals as Tokarski and has a .954 save percentage to boot.

Sweden also made short work of Russia in the round robin, easily winning 5-0 and playing a very disciplined game. They've taken just 42 PIM all tournament, second to only Finland and 14 fewer than Canada (who had one misconduct).

Sweden's leading scorer so far is Mikael Backlund with five goals, while defenceman Erik Karlsson leads the way with nine points. Both are already drafted (Backlund by Calgary, Karlsson by Ottawa), unlike 11 of their teammates who are eligible this June.

In other words, expect a lot of scouts to be in attendance on Monday night.

This is the strongest Swedish draft class I can ever remember, with Hedman to go in the top two, Magnus Svensson-Paajarvi ranked in the top 10, and David Rundblad and Jacob Josefson in the top 20.

Then there's captain Oscar Moller, who turns 20 in about two weeks and had 13 points in 30 games with Los Angeles in the NHL prior to this tournament. He and Matt Tedenby, a Devils' first rounder, could both break out in the final after scoring only once apiece so far.

They're a dangerous team, and it should be a great final. Sweden won silver last year after losing to Canada in the final, and that was their first medal in the tourney in 12 years.

Sweden last won gold in 1981, 28 years ago, and long before any of the current crop of players were born. This would be a big deal for them to win.

And it'll be a big deal if Canada loses, of course.

17 comments | 0 recs |

Perry suspended four games for elbow

by James Mirtle on Jan 4, 2009 1:21 AM CST

Anaheim Ducks forward Corey Perry has been suspended for four games, without pay, for elbowing Philadelphia Flyers forward Claude Giroux during the third period of NHL Game #564 Friday night, the National Hockey League announced.

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and based on his average annual salary, Perry will forfeit $114,516.12. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

>> league release

I actually caught this game last night, and Perry's hit was a cheap shot in every sense of the word. It's good to see the league coming down on a star player for what was a lower profile incident than some of the others we've seen hit with suspensions this long.

It was a double minor during the game but should have been a misconduct:

16 comments | 0 recs |

Crosby's embarrassing display

by James Mirtle on Jan 3, 2009 7:31 PM CST

This is pretty ridiculous:

I'm tied up in the newsroom due to the Canada-Russia festivities at the world juniors, but George Richards of the Miami Herald and Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo! Sports have more.

For what it's worth, I agree with Nick Boynton: "That was just embarrassing. I can understand a little bit what he was trying to do, but that's a not a very professional move. You ask a guy to fight. You don't jump a guy when his head is down taking a face off. That's pretty immature and childish."

UPDATE This is sort of the night for weird fights, as Alexander Semin took a turn "playing the bongos" on Marc Staal in the Caps star's first NHL fight.

I noticed Doug Weight fought Christian Ehrhoff in San Jose, too.

40 comments | 1 recs |

The all-star votes are in (and there are some weird ones)

by James Mirtle on Jan 3, 2009 5:00 PM CST

Here are the final vote leaders in fan balloting (players in italics are the starters). There's quite a bit more love for Radek Smolenak than I was predicting:

Eastern Conference Forwards

Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh 1,713,021
Evgeni Malkin Pittsburgh 1,585,936
Alex Kovalev Montreal 1,343,301
Saku Koivu Montreal 1,320,604
Alex Tanguay Montreal 1,296,701
Alex Ovechkin Washington 470,276
Marc Savard Boston 260,794
Patrice Bergeron Boston 235,292
Alexander Semin Washington 185,075
Simon Gagne Philadelphia 167,836
Thomas Vanek Buffalo 160,825
Mike Richards Philadelphia 136,533
Daniel Briere Philadelphia 109,518
Vincent Lecavalier Tampa Bay 86,938
Derek Roy Buffalo 82,244
Chris Drury NY Rangers 66,881
Ilya Kovalchuk Atlanta 62,159
Dany Heatley Ottawa 55,773
Scott Gomez NY Rangers 55,018
Daniel Alfredsson Ottawa 51,383
Zach Parise New Jersey 48,828
Eric Staal Carolina 48,386
Jeff Carter * Philadelphia 46,926
Markus Naslund NY Rangers 46,436
Jordan Staal * Pittsburgh 35,446
Martin St. Louis Tampa Bay 33,070
Jason Spezza Ottawa 31,841
Rod Brind'Amour Carolina 26,529
Patrik Elias New Jersey 26,325
Maxime Talbot * Pittsburgh 21,848
Phil Kessel * Boston 19,821
Ray Whitney Carolina 19,457
Brian Rolston New Jersey 19,140
Milan Lucic * Boston 15,134
Radek Smolenak * Tampa Bay 10,471
David Krejci * Boston 10,255
Trent Hunter NY Islanders 9,841

Eastern Conference Defensemen

Andrei Markov Montreal 1,443,091
Mike Komisarek Montreal 1,373,628
Sergei Gonchar Pittsburgh 1,354,079
Ryan Whitney Pittsburgh 1,311,374
Zdeno Chara Boston 464,414
Mike Green Washington 290,394
Kimmo Timonen Philadelphia 176,776
Teppo Numminen Buffalo 142,228
Tomas Kaberle Toronto 102,854
Wade Redden NY Rangers 86,489
Jay Bouwmeester Florida 81,827
Chris Phillips Ottawa 30,558

Eastern Conference Goaltenders

Carey Price Montreal 1,515,885
Marc-Andre Fleury Pittsburgh 1,486,079
Henrik Lundqvist NY Rangers 161,402
Ryan Miller Buffalo 150,724
Martin Biron Philadelphia 114,879
Tim Thomas * Boston 96,623
Martin Brodeur New Jersey 68,797
Vesa Toskala Toronto 42,445
Kari Lehtonen Atlanta 16,872
Tomas Vokoun Florida 14,753
Rick DiPietro NY Islanders 13,050

* write-in candidate

Western Conference Forwards

Patrick Kane Chicago 917,551
Jonathan Toews Chicago 809,599
Ryan Getzlaf Anaheim 716,569
Joe Thornton San Jose 442,364
Marian Hossa Detroit 419,463
Jarome Iginla Calgary 411,862
Pavel Datsyuk Detroit 395,316
Patrick Marleau San Jose 385,538
Henrik Zetterberg Detroit 384,307
Mikko Koivu Minnesota 176,307
Rick Nash Columbus 129,239
Shane Doan Phoenix 109,018
Joe Sakic Colorado 107,762
Mike Ribeiro Dallas 99,490
Brad Boyes St. Louis 89,414
Olli Jokinen Phoenix 85,207
Ales Hemsky Edmonton 82,039
Marian Gaborik Minnesota 78,361
Jason Arnott Nashville 70,483
Dustin Brown Los Angeles 68,302
Paul Stastny Colorado 67,002
Mike Modano Dallas 66,584
Devin Setoguchi * San Jose 62,353
Patrick Sharp * Chicago 54,137
Anze Kopitar Los Angeles 53,412
Daniel Sedin Vancouver 50,866
Teemu Selanne * Anaheim 48,735
Paul Kariya St. Louis 47,916
Henrik Sedin Vancouver 47,665
Milan Hejduk Colorado 43,845
Brenden Morrow Dallas 36,272
Shawn Horcoff Edmonton 33,301
Keith Tkachuk St. Louis 31,033
Brad Richards Dallas 29,283

* write-in candidate

Western Conference Defensemen

Brian Campbell Chicago 784,476
Scott Niedermayer Anaheim 637,316
Chris Pronger Anaheim 625,810
Nicklas Lidstrom Detroit 570,151
Dion Phaneuf Calgary 483,441
Dan Boyle San Jose 472,018
Rob Blake San Jose 407,124
Brian Rafalski Detroit 246,810
Sheldon Souray Edmonton 180,353
Shea Weber Nashville 139,170
Brent Burns Minnesota 104,034
Robyn Regehr Calgary 56,581

Western Conference Goaltenders

J.S. Giguere Anaheim 617,241
Roberto Luongo Vancouver 464,942
Evgeni Nabokov San Jose 458,758
Chris Osgood Detroit 206,919
Niklas Backstrom Minnesota 136,263
Ilya Bryzgalov Phoenix 84,165
Miikka Kiprusoff Calgary 83,459
Pascal Leclaire Columbus 49,702
Marty Turco Dallas 48,166