Canada defeats Russia 5-0

[I think not]

Russia's goalie Anton Khudobin (right) skates away as Team Canada players celebrate teammate Blake Comeau's goal. (CP PHOTO/Richard Lam)
VANCOUVER (CP) - Canada won the world junior hockey championship for the 12th time Thursday night, and this one was one of the most impressive of them all.

Coach Brent Sutter's players defeated a highly skilled Russian team 5-0 with a determined effort that included their best offensive display of the tournament. The bruising physical play, dogged checking and puck control in cycling the puck deep in the Russian end personified how Canadian hockey is played.

Canada won consecutive world junior titles for the first time since 1997, when it won a fifth in a row.

The Russian team had a vast edge in experience. Eight players who were in their lineup a year ago in a 6-1 loss to Canada in the final returned this year. Canada didn't have a player back from that game.

Sutter, who owns, manages and coaches the junior team in Red Deer, Alta., became the first coach to guide the national junior team to two consecutive world titles, improving to 12-0 in his two years at the helm.

Goaltender Justin Pogge of the Calgary Hitmen was terrific, especially in the early going when Canada seized a 2-0 lead despite being outshot. Steve Downie from Ontario's Peterborough Petes and Blake Comeau of British Columbia's Kelowna Rockets scored the goals.

Michael Blunden, who plays in the Ontario league for Pennsylvania's Erie Otters, scored two power-play goals in the second period to make it 4-0 as Canada came on strong.

The Russians tried to rally in the third but Canada's defence kept their shooters to the perimeter, forcing them to take long shots, and Pogge did the rest.

Kyle Chipchura, Canada's captain from the Prince Albert, Sask., junior club, added a goal with less than three minutes left. The celebration was on.

Sutter's team simply refused to be outworked by what many considered to be a more talented club. Sutter set the bar high and got his players to jump for it.

"You always want to get your team and your players to overachieve," he said the day before the final.

He succeeded, and the GM Place crowd was on its feet cheering and waving Canadian flags for the last two minutes of the game.

Finland defeated the United States 4-2 in the game for bronze. The highly touted Americans were the biggest disappointment of the tournament, which was first held in 1974. It will be staged in Sweden next winter.

 

[Jersay]

Alright. Shows you Canada is still very good at hockey, even when we have unseasoned players going for the World Junior Championship. You can never count Canada out.

 

[#juan]

I was at GM place for the last three games of the Medal round and I thought Canada had the best team there. The exhibition 8 - 1 rout of the Russians by Team Canada was apparently no accident. It is interesting that the media were picking The USA, Sweden, and Russia, as the favorites up until the semis.

 

[#juan]

2006 IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP
AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED

VANCOUVER (BC) – The 2006 IIHF World Junior Championship Directorate announced the individual award winners on Thursday, following the gold medal game.

IIHF DIRECTORATE AWARDS
The Directorate Awards are determined by a vote at the Tournament Directorate, which consists of representatives of all teams, the IIHF and the Host Committee

Top Goaltender: Tuukka Rask (FIN)
Top Defenceman: Marc Staal (CAN)
Top Forward: Evgeni Malkin (RUS)

MEDIA ALL-STAR TEAM
The all-star team is the result of a vote among accredited journalists covering the 2006 IIHF World Junior Championship

Goaltender: Tuukka Rask (FIN)
Defencemen: Luc Bourdon (CAN), Jack Johnson (USA)
Forwards: Evgeni Malkin (RUS), Steve Downie (CAN), Lauri Tukonen (FIN)

MEDIA MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
The Most Valuable Player (MVP) is determined by a vote among accredited journalists covering the 2006 IIHF World Junior Championship

Most Valuable Player: Evgeni Malkin (RUS)

 

[Toro]

RE: Canada defeats Russia

Canada was being outplayed in that game. There was a point where we were outshot 15-3. When it was 2-0, we were outshot 20-10. Talent-wise, I thought the US and Russia were better. But that's why they play the game.

 

[gopher]

Is any of this true:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48221


Canadian fans
hurl abuse at U.S.
Vancouver crowd cheers for Russians at international tournament


Posted: January 6, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Canadian hockey fans at an international tournament in Vancouver, B.C., chanted anti-U.S. slogans as they cheered the Russian team to victory over the American squad.

A Canadian columnist, who called the booing "disgraceful," said the venom began toward the end of the semi-final game at the World Junior Hockey Championship, which concluded last night with Team Canada playing the Russian national team.

"U.S. sucks!" the Canadian fans chanted.


Pete McMartin, writing for CanWest News Service, pointed out the Canadian team wasn't even on the ice at the time.

If it were, he said, "that would have gone some way toward explaining the Yankee animus oozing out of the stands."

But McMartin said the Canadian crowd "wasn't just rooting for the Russians – amazing enough in itself, considering that bitter history – it was rooting against the Americans. And the chanters weren't so much interested in a hockey game as scoring points against America, the country, not the team."

The columnist said the Canadian crowd's "antipathy toward the American team has been a constant."

In a previous game, U.S. goalie Cory Schneider, he noted, had to concentrate to block out the boos raining down from the stands.

U.S. head coach Walt Kyle, McMartin commented wryly, "was under the mistaken impression – one still shared by many Americans, the poor, trusting boobs – that because our two great countries are neighbors, and have co-existed peacefully for over 150 years, and have vast economic and cultural ties, that he could consider Canada a home-ice-away-from-home and Vancouverites would naturally cheer for the American team rather than for a team from a country which, not 20 years ago, was chiefly known for its vicious soul-crushing despotism, and whose hockey teams were reviled by Canadian fans as products of a drab socialist machine that saw sport as nothing more than an arm of state propaganda."

McMartin said the U.S. coach probably "hadn't figured on the Canadian weakness for envy."

"His charges are, after all, 17-to-19-year-old boys, not architects of the war against Iraq," the columnist said.

If it had been the other way around, McMartin wrote – an American crowd chanting "Canada sucks" – there would be "country-wide alarm" accompanied by a televised forum on the "crisis in U.S.-Canadian relations."

McMartin said he wants the coach and his American team to know they deserve an apology and that the anti-American chanters "do not typify the Canadian sense of patriotism; that they do not personify our relationship with his country; and that lastly, and most importantly, they are idiots."


As WorldNetDaily reported in 2003, a group of U.S. peewee hockey players at a tournament in Montreal were barraged with anti-American insults and witnessed protesters trashing the American flag.

Hundreds of college students were marching through the streets in an anti-war demonstration and seized upon the players' bus as a target for its anti-U.S. venom. Several demonstrators made obscene gestures toward the bus, and an American flag was dragged through the street.

At another demonstration, the Americans watched as a crowd cheered when a protester waved the Iraqi flag, and booed the U.S. flag. Next, the Stars and Stripes were doused with kerosene and ignited.

During their trip, the visiting youngsters attended a Montreal Canadiens-New York Islanders game at the Montreal Bell Center during which the U.S. national anthem was widely booed by the crowd.

During their own games, the boys said their Canadian counterparts were verbally abusive during face-offs.


Sounds like reich wing propaganda crap. How was this reported in the Provinces?

 

[#juan]

gopher

Most of it is true, to a point. The U.S./Russia game was a poor example of good Canadian sportsmanship. A small, very vocal, part of the crowd was responsible for booing the American team. A good part of that booing was directed at Jim Johnson, a defenceman who blind sided one of the Canadians in a previous game. You have to understand that a lot of Canadians wanted Russia to win because Canada whipped Russia 8 - 1 in an earlier game. We beat the U.S. as well, but by a score of 3 - 2. As it turned out, Canada beat the Russians in the final 5 - 0. Against the Americans, the score would have been closer.

The "U.S. sucks" chant was that same group but it lasted only for about a minute or so. Most didn't join in.