Canada beats Russia 5-3, advances to World Cup finals

If Sweden wants to advance with a chance at winning the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, they know they have to get through a tough, proven opponent in Team Europe.

The Calgary Flames decided they wanted Backlund to leave the World Cup of Hockey to be evaluated by their doctors. Two weeks ago, after, it would have been laughable to predict this kind of future for Team Europe.

“Everybody thought that having eight different countries was going to be the Achilles that we had no chance to play here”, Team Europe head coach Ralph Krueger told reporters. “But it’s a pretty good feeling”.

“He always comes up big in the big games”, Marchand said of Crosby. “Shame on us if we don’t take them serious for what they’ve done to this point”.

Five: We overlooked Team Europe and were under the gun in game two. Being the better team doesn’t automatically guarantee victory on any given night.

The problem was they may have given him too much.

Of course the National Hockey League is only tacitly interested in how interesting or competitive the tournament is. With the help of Erik Karlsson and the Swedish defensive group, their jobs will be to shut down the always unsafe Anze Kopitar, Marian Gaborik and the rest of Europe’s assorted forwards.

A full-house at the Air Canada centre in Toronto on hand for this one. Essentially, they are a bunch of veterans giving it one final go on the world stage.

Even overseas, the buzz has been limited.

Canada centre Sidney Crosby (87) celebrates his goal against Russian Federation during first period semifinal World Cup of Hockey action, in Toronto on Saturday, September 24, 2016.

Much of the credit for Team Europe’s run belongs with Krueger.

But, as so often has been the case, when things looked questionable for Team Canada, the Crosby Show took over.

“I’m so pleased these peripheral countries in the world of hockey have had an opportunity to compete with the best in the world for the first time in their lives and to truly believe in being competitive on the way to a semifinal“, Krueger said. They were by far the most exciting team, and a win over Canada would’ve been the greatest moment of those young players’ careers, but at least with Canada vs. Russia, everyone in the crowd knew who to cheer for.

By all accounts, that is what’s happened.

This game must have felt like death by 1,000 paper cuts if you were cheering for Sweden. The Swedes needed a goal from Erik Karlsson with four minutes to force overtime, but the extra frame lasted only a few minutes before Europe’s Tomas Tatar scored his second of the day to seal the win.

The Slovakian forward’s goal stood up after a short review concluded he did not kick the puck into the net. “They have very good players”, said Sweden captain Henrik Sedin. “So it just feels good to be where we’re at”.

Perhaps if we saw more urgency from Sweden when its games were tied, or when they had a lead, we might be talking about how they’d fare against Canada.

“They’re a great story, and shame on us if we don’t take them serious for what they’ve done to this point”, Armstrong said. HOLY HOT SAUCE! He made that entire sequence happen and finished it off with the overtime victor! However, the Europeans shocked the hockey world when they beat the US in game one of their tournament slate. Even if the Euros are massive underdogs, they’ve already announced themselves as loveable overachievers. And yet, on Tuesday it’ll be upon us: Little Slovakia and Slovenia and Austria and Denmark versus the big old favourites to settle the small matter of world supremacy. Misplayed pucks and succumbing to pressure from Canada was a big reason they couldn’t manage to get over the hump in this particular tournament. “You could tell in the third when we started pushing the pace we created a lot of chances”. “There’s something new for lots of people in our dressing room. We’re going to try to come in here and spoil that”.