This post is only very tangentially related to college hockey, but
since it's the off-season, I hope I'll be forgiven.
 
I had the chance to watch the USA-Russia game from the Ice Hockey
World Championships last night, and it struck me as a rather fitting
battle to take place 20 years after the Miracle on Ice.  Team Russia
was stacked with NHL stars like Pavel Bure and Alexei Yashin, while
Team USA was contained a number of current or recent college players.
In the former category were Brian Gionta (whose name I didn't hear
during the broadcast) and 2000 Hobey winner Ryan Mottau of Boston
College, and North Dakota's Karl Goehring (who seems to be the
third-string goalie), while the latter included UND's Jason Blake,
Princeton's Jeff Halpern, New Hampshire's Eric Boguniecki, Boston
University's Chris O'Sullivan, Alaska-Anchorage's Mike Peluso, and
Providence's Hal Gill.  (I wonder if this team holds the record for
most Hobey Baker finalists on the same squad.)  Team USA also had a
player of added personal interest for me, Chris Tancil, who was MVP of
the World Stars in the 1999 Swiss All-Star Game.
 
After Russia crushed France 8-1 and the US only managed a 3-3 tie
against Switzerland in their respective first games, and after France
shocked the Swiss 4-2 earlier that afternoon, the capacity crowd in
St. Petersburg must have been expecting the home side to dominate.
Instead the USA played a great scoreless first period, with Blake just
failing to convert on two clean breakaways, Gill (whom I vividly
rememer mixing it up with Cornell's Tony Bergin at the 1996 Syracuse
Invitational Tournament) flattening his share of NHL superstars, and
unheralded Robert Esche putting on a stellar performance between the
pipes.
 
The Russians put on most of the pressure in the first few minutes of
the second and third period, but as the Eurosport commentators put it,
the US would "draw first blood".  The metaphor is actually somewhat
inappropriate, as the goal came towards the end of a four-minute
powerplay brought about when Alexander Prokopiev accidentally
high-sticked Tancil in the face, causing his lip to bleed.  Blake,
after sending his first-period breakaway chances into the side of the
net and Russian goalie Ilia Bryzgalov's right pad, managed to sneak
Peluso's rebound under the same pad from the edge of the crease.
(Bryzgalov for his part also stood on his head a number of times, and
the game saw a lot of attack and counter-attack in transition.)  The
USA would increase the advantage to 2-0 a couple of minutes later on a
3-on-2 when Steve Heinze's point-blank shot missed the net, went
around behind the cage, and was buried by Phil Housley on the other
side.  Russia's best chance came at the end of the period when Esche
lost his stick during a USA penalty kill.  Gill gave him his, and
proceeded to to an amazing job blocking shots in front of the net
without a stick.  Twice he lay his 6'6" frame along the ice in front
of the goal and effectively blocked the bottom half of the net.  After
about 30 seconds of this, Esche managed to glove a shot and draw a
whistle.
 
David Legwand scored the third and final goal for Team USA six minutes
into the third when the Russian D were caught sleeping in transition
as a US power play (brought about after Dmitri Mironov hit a prone
Blake in the head with his stick).  The Russians never stopped
attacking, and finished with a 44-30 shot advantage, but Esche was up
to the task, even after Gill went off for interference (grimly
laughing with the penaly box attendant about the theatrical sprawl on
the ice his victim took) with four minutes to play.  The partisan
crowd reminded me what I like least about European hockey by whistling
at their team throughout the period and then littering the ice with
random objects when the game ended in a 3-0 victory for the Americans.
 
One major difference between this Russian team (which had Vladislav
Tretiak behind the bench as an assistant, BTW) and the Red Army teams
of the 1970s and 1980s was that they had not played together as a
team, and especially when they fell behind, played like a group of
All-Stars trying to accomplish everything by individual effort.  If
Esche had not been playing so well, it might have worked, but as it
was, it just added to the frustration for the home side.
 
The USA can win the group with a win against France tomorrow, or (I
believe) if Russia fails to beat Switzerland.  The top three teams
advance to the next round, an accomplishment which the US has already
clinched.
 
Incidentally, Team Canada is currently third in their group, having
beaten Japan 6-0 and lost 4-3 to Norway.  They play the Czech Republic
(winners over both Norway and Japan) in their final group game
tomorrow.  Looking at their roster, the only name I recognized from
the college ranks was 1997 Hobey winner Brendan Morrison.
 
Articles about the USA-Russia game on the web:
 
http://www.ihwc.net/hockeyPages/News/85.html
http://www.ihwc.net/hockeyPages/Recap/90.html
 
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                 [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.