Team Europe's road to gold in WJC

[hockeyis66 143]

Team Europe celebrates their championship in the World Juniors after a 3rd place finish in the round robin

 

Team Europe came into the VHL World Junior Championships as a favorite to bring home a medal for sure since the team had the highest OV rating out of the 5 teams in the tournament although that can also be a little deceiving but the expectations were nothing lower than a bronze medal in the hopes of winning gold. 

 

Round Robin – Team Europe would finish in 3^rd place overall with a 4-3-1 record which was good for 12 points, 6 points behind second place and 5 ahead of 4^th.  Europe had the best defense in the tournament by giving up only 23 goals in the 8 games while having the 3^rd best offense by scoring 27 goals.  They beat every team once and lost to every team once with the loss against Team USA being the overtime loss on their record.

 

Goaltending – Aike van Giesbergen and Papa Emeritus would split the 8 game round robin portion by playing 4 games each and each of them would win 2 games. Van Giesbergen would have a save percentage of .926 and a GAA of 2.93 while Emeritus would put up similar numbers with a .919 save percentage and a GAA of 2.75.

 

Defense – Team Europe would only have 4 defensemen for the tournament and they would log heavy minutes – JaredN Jr, Damien Salducci, David Tavau and Sven Reikkinen.  JaredN would lead the team in assists with 8 and tied for the most points on the team with 10.   Tavau would chip in with 6 points and Salducci with 5 and with both players, they would all be assists.  Reikkinen would have a goal and an assist for 2 points.

 

Forwards – Henri le Massif led the team in scoring with 5 goals and tied for the team lead in points with 10.  Team Europe had a well rounded effort when it came to offense from the forwards as Bonaparte and Lemieux each had 4 goals and 4 assists and Tessier had 2 goals and 6 assists.  Mikalavz, Tallinder, Khan, Wolf and Sunish each had at least a goal and 2 points or more during the 8 game round robin.

 

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Semifinals – 3^rd place Team Europe would face off against 2^nd place Team World with the winner going to the gold medal game.  Team World would crush Europe in shots by a count of 50 to 36, but it was two 3^rd period goals by Sunish and Wolf that would give Team Europe a 4 to 3 come from behind win as the team was down 3 to 1 in the second period.  Also scoring for Team Europe were Lemieux and Tallinder.  Emeritus made 47 saves including 17 in the third period to secure the win.

 

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Gold Medal Game – Canada defeated Team Asia in the other semifinal and the Gold Medal Game will be Team Europe against Team Canada.  Europe would once again be outshot in the game by a count of 38 to 30, but Europe would jump out to a 3-0 lead in the first period behind goals from Tallinder, Sunish and Miklavz en route to a 4-2 win and the gold medal.  Tallinder’s goal came just 54 seconds into the game and he would score a power play goal about halfway through the third period to make the final score 4-2 as Canada cut the lead to just 3-2 earlier in the period.  Emeritus made 36 saves and backstopped the team to a 2-0 record in the medal round.

 

Word Count: 575

[jRuutu 2,464]

9.99/10

 

Great work! Especially, for someone like myself who did not follow the WJC as closely, this was a fun read! A lot of information, presented in an easy-to-read format. The layout is clean. The flags at the end are a nice touch. Perhaps the picture at the top could be at the center as well? Overall, very nice!