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US National Junior Team Evaluation Camp - Day 3

August 7, 2012, 8:38 AM ET [28 Comments]
Julie Robenhymer
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In the first international games, it was a tale of two teams and I'm not entirely sure if the story is about USA-Blue and USA-White or Finland and Sweden. The early game was a battle between Finland and USA-Blue in which Mario Lucia (Penticton - MIN) scored the game winner with 35 seconds left in regulation that also completed his hat trick for a 5-4 win. The late game was a 5-1 thrashing by Sweden over USA-White.

Both european teams are so good at moving the puck around and creating this version of controlled chaos that makes your head spin wondering where the puck is and where it's going next. Add into that their smooth skating that enables them to swarm all over the ice like a bunch of bees and it's easy to get lost in the chaos. The real difference is that Sweden can sustain it and Finland can't. Turns out the defending World Junior Champions are still very, very good.

Finland controlled most of the first period, but then USA-Blue started throwing the body around and the Finns didn't have an answer. Lucia scored two goals in the first by going hard to the net and cashing in on rebounds. Sean Kuraly (Indiana - SJS) stayed hot even though he and Colin Blackwell (Harvard - SJS) were split up, assisting on Lucia's goals and putting one in himself. Blackwell skated with John Gaudreau (BC - CGY) and Alex Galchenyuk (Sarnia - MTL) and they seemed to be in the mix a lot more offensively than in the past two games with Galchenyuk even scoring to break the 3-3 tie in the third. There were some huge hits and a much higher commitment to sacrificing the body to block shots in this game (Blackwell and Galchenyuk even had to make a trip to the dentist after this one). The players talk about it in the video blog from Day Three…



Finland's goals were scored by Joel Armia (wrister from the slot), Olli Maatta (a wrister off a turnover), Juuso Ikonen (2 - tap in from a wide open crease & a filthy snipe from the doorstep).

Sweden took control of their game against USA-White from the opening draw. There wasn't much to compliment the Americans on but the standouts were JT Miller (Plymouth - NYR), who makes nice crisp passes, has great vision and is a stud in face-offs, Seth Jones (NTDP - DE 2013), who didn't have a stellar first game and sat out the second game, but really brought his A game to this one with smart positioning, great passes and generating some offense, and finally Mike Reilly (Penticton - CBJ), who was one of the few people to still be dialed in after things got out of hand. He's got a powerful shot from the outside and scored USA-White's only goal of the game on the power play.

Sweden's goals were scored by Pontus Aberg (snipe from the circle off the rush on the PP), Mika Zibanejad (shot from the point on the PP), Viktor Arvidsson (off the face-off) and Victor Rask (2 - a spin around snipe from the slot & picking up a juicy rebound in the slot).

The US roster was trimmed early this morning as Alex Broadhurst, Connor Carrick, Brian Cooper, Brian Hart, Logan Nelson, Mike Paliotta, Adam Reid, Robbie Russo, Joakim Ryan, Henrik Samuelsson, Jordan Schmaltz and Andrew Welinski were sent home leaving the roster at 33. I'm not surprised with any of them except Reid. I thought he brought a lot as a checking winger with some offensive edge and had a really good showing all three games. This doesn't mean he and the rest of those cut don't have a chance to work their tails off in the first half of the season and earn an invitation to the selection camp in December though. USA Hockey is just trying to make the roster a little more manageable as they look to start implementing some systems and team concepts at practice. That said, this is the largest final roster this camp has seen in recent years. Housely is really using this camp to it's fullest as he and the rest of the selection committee are truly using it as an opportunity to evaluate the talent they have at their disposal to put together a winning team in Ufa, Russia. It's not like they can just go out and find a free agent or recruit someone to fill a hole. This is what they have and they have to develop a system that exploits their strengths. It's a different approach from years past and that's what makes it interesting.

While it's important for these guys to develop chemistry and learn their tendencies on the ice, we also thought it was important that they know how to spell each others' names so we decided to lighten the mood yesterday and play the name game. Here's what happened…..



Team USA will only be practicing today, but there is a game this afternoon between Finland and Sweden at 4pm ET.

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Day 2 Blog

Julie
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