Look at bronze

[jRuutu 2,426]

 

Last night was the final day in the season 70 world junior championships. United States of America played against Canada in the gold medal game and Team World played against Team Europe in the bronze game,  I´m going to take a closer look at the Bronze game.

 

There was not much between the two teams when heading into the bronze game, Europe won four games during the round-robin games and World won three games. Both teams lost to the North-American teams in the semi-final games, Europe lost 2-0 and World lost 7-5. Perhaps the biggest difference could be seen in special teams, World was the better both in penalty kill and on the powerplay during round-robin games. Europe´s powerplay percentage was 21.28 when World had 26.19. Team World had a 77.50% penalty kill rating and Europe 69.70%. Did that somehow show in the semi-final games?

 

In a way - yes. Team Europe had a lot of powerplay opportunities, but failed to score any goals against the Americans. Did not let in any goals on the penalty kill though, so penalty kill was better, but powerplay failed to produce.

 

Team World, on the other hand, scored three powerplay goals against Canada, it was obvious their powerplay was still dangerous. Team World let in one goal during the penalty kill, so fair to say that for the bronze game you had the red hot powerplay of Team World going against improved penalty kill of Team Europe.

 

Guess how it played out? Exactly like that! Team World had a lot of opportunities to score on the powerplay, Edwin THE Encarnacion for example logged in a whopping 8:25 on the powerplay alone and shot six times, but only thing Team World had to show for of the powerplay was a shorthanded goal scored against. Shush Nyko scored a short hander for Team Europe in the second period and tied the game 2-2.

 

What a big goal that was, Team World lead the game 2-1 after first, but after the short-handed goal Team Europe was the only team to score goals, two more goals in the third period - Team Europe won the bronze medals 4-2.

 

Team Europe fans celebrating

 

Special teams played a huge part in that game, unfortunately for Team World, their powerplay failed to get it done in the most crucial game. Perhaps getting to play in a Bronze game was not as big for them as it was for the Europeans or Team Europe was just hungrier and wanted it more.

 

When Team World´s powerplay was hitting everything else than the net, Team Europes penalty kill units kept improving during the tournament and came up big when needed the most, perfect penalty kill performance in the bronze game.

 

The best player of the game was Roque Davis, bossed the blueline for Team Europe with assists in all four goals, that is special and I recommend all the fans to look at San Diego games this season in VHLM, going to be watching a future superstar playing! Davis already has 95 assists and 123 points in 52 games as a defender, that is crazy.