I'm sitting in the media tribune at Yubileiny Arena in St. Petersburg for the last time, currently watching Finland take the upper hand over Denmark in the first of two of tonight's World Championship quarterfinals.
It's surprisingly subdued here. The Finnish fans were out in force to support their excellent team during the preliminary round, but perhaps it was more difficult to get tickets and/or make plans for the quarterfinal round, when there isn't much notice about how the matchups will unfold.
As you know, Finland ended up finishing first in Group A after the 4-0 shutout of Team Canada on Tuesday night. Here's hoping Canada can bounce back tonight against the Swedes and come along with me to Moscow for the semifinal on Saturday.
I'm also planning to attend a World Legends Hockey League event on Friday in Moscow. That's the league run by Slava Fetisov and Pavel Bure, featuring the 45-and-over players. Lots of other big names are also expected to be in attendance tomorrow, with players including Igor Larionov and Sergei Fedorov, Chris Chelios and Jari Kurri. Mike Keenan and Lanny McDonald will also be there.
I'm not exactly sure what the event will entail, but I'm plenty curious to see what the Legends are up to!
Meanwhile, here in St. Petersburg yesterday, I had a chance to corner Jannik Hansen ahead of today's game against the Finns.
This year's tournament has been a wild success for Denmark, which has reached the quarterfinal for only the second time in history. Hansen came into the QF with two goals and two assists, playing on the team's top line with Nikolaj Ehlers of Winnipeg and Lars Eller of Montreal.
Click here for my interview with Hansen.
He gave me a rundown of Denmark's tournament to date, and we talked about his role on the Danish power play.
He also took his best stab and the "win now vs. develop for the future" debate surrounding the Canucks.
Obviously, they want to continue in the same direction. Get younger, turn over the roster, kind of get some new blood in. Build the team again through draft, free agency, whatever it might be.
There's going to be a lot of change throughout the summer. We haven't seen that yet, with the draft coming, free agency, who's going, who's staying. That's tough for me to say right now.
They want to get younger. They want to start a new core group again that they can hopefully push to compete for the cup again. I mean, we were there and were probably on the way down. Hopefully, we hit the bottom this year and are starting to go the other way. You have to kind of wait and see the pieces that are there.
CA: I don’t know if you heard, Willie Desjardins was on the radio back in Vancouver the other day, but he said he thought the team lost its way this year because it tried to serve two masters: winning and developing players.
Hansen: It's above my pay grade, if you want to put it that way. I can see that completely. You want to develop young guys, put them in a position to win. Obviously, young guys aren't there yet, but there's no way they're going to get that experience without playing, so you're sacrificing something, somewhere.
Hansen and I also discussed former Canuck and Denmark teammate Nicklas Jensen, who has been a scoring sensation here in Russia. Hansen reminisced about a shootout goal that Jensen scored with the Canucks on Roberto Luongo late in that 2013-14 season under John Tortorella.
Hansen's memory is phenomenal. He was able to walk me through Denmark's entire round-robin sequence, as well as accurately pulling out old details like the Jensen goal from two years ago. As with Thatcher Demko last week, I was very appreciative of the time he took with me and his willingness to answer all my questions.
I also tried to track down Jacob Markstrom yesterday after the Swedes arrived here in St. Petersburg to play Canada, but Sweden ended up cancelling its practice. I haven't seen confirmation that he'll play tonight after he took the 4-1 loss in Sweden's final preliminary-round game against Russia. If he does, it's going to be a bit weird for me, having him go up against Team Canada.
I'll be back in Vancouver next week, at which time I'll start digging back into the draft and other offseason fun and games.
For now, hoping for a Team Canada win tonight....
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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