Men's Ice Hockey IIHF World Championship 2019

[hckošice 14,822]

Patrick Kane will play for USA !!! The Chicago Blackhawks star will serve as team Captain, he´ll play at his 3rd WCh, he played also last year. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2831454-patrick-kane-to-captain-team-usa-at-2019-iihf-world-hockey-championships

[hckošice 14,822]

Road to Bratislava/Košice

 

Exhibition Games

April 17th, 2019

(23 Days to Go)-

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Czech Republic - Germany  5-4

Denmark - Sweden  2-3

 

[ahjfcshfghb 287]

2 hours ago, hckosice said:

Road to Bratislava/Košice

 

Exhibition Games

April 17th, 2019

(23 Days to Go)-

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Czech Republic - Germany  5-4

Denmark - Sweden  2-3

 

These minor teams have really improved. The Czechs have barely beaten Austria twice and now Germany. And Denmark here too. 

Do we know if Britain have played any games against Championship teams yet?

[hckošice 14,822]

8 hours ago, ahjfcshfghb said:

These minor teams have really improved. The Czechs have barely beaten Austria twice and now Germany. And Denmark here too. 

Do we know if Britain have played any games against Championship teams yet?

 

Well, minor teams are not longer minor, nowadays ice hockey is completely different of the sport we knew decades before. Now it´s more athletic, the goalies are bigger (size and eqipements) the shoot-outs are slightly but surely becoming a natural ending of matches.

 

The problem for GB is that they have limited options to search for a exhibition game opponent, they are not part of the Euro Hockey Challenge project (CZE FIN, RUS, SWE, GER, SUI, SVK, NOR, DEN, FRA, LAT and AUT), so they can not play thse exhibition games (the same apply this year also for Italy) both are thus forced to play each other if they want some top division teams test games, and they will do that in 3 friendly matches between them this week in Coventry, GB willl then face some clubs opponents and before the WCh they will play against SVK after their arrival here.

 

USA and CAN are also famous for their "on purpose" lack of test maches, they usually arrive to Europe only a couple of days before the tournament and play 1 or 2 matches 2 or 3 days before the tournament just to recognize a bit the europeans biggers rink

[hckošice 14,822]

Some interesting NHL names that already accepted the invitations of their National Teams for the Wch

 

 

Already 11 NHLers confirmed their participation for in Slovakia this May !!! Loui Eriksson from Vancouver will also play at the Worlds, The reigning champions can also count on the help of Elias Petersson and Jacob Markstrom (both from Vancouver as well) Erik Gustafsson and Marcus Kruger (Chicago) Adam Larsson (Edmonton) Robert Hägg (Philadelphia) Adrian Kempe (LA Kings) Mario Kempe and Oliver Ekman-Larsson (Arizona) and Jesper Bratt (New Jersey)

 

 In other hand Rickard Gronborg received negative answers from Mika Zibanejad (NY Rangers) Hampus Lindholm, Rickard Rakell or Jakob Silfverberg (Anaheim)

 

 

will be again strong as hell, among others another huge world super star will play in Bratislava/Košice this May Yevgeni Malkin (Pittsburgh) apparently will accept the invitation, The Russian team is already filled with the likes of the goalie Alex Georgiev , defencers Ilia Lyubushkin, Yegor Yakovlev, Ivan Provorov or forwards Ilia Kovalchuk, Artem Anisimov, Vladislav Namestnikov and Yevgeni Dadonov

 

and USA teams are not entirely named yet, but we already know that Canada will play for example with the rising star Sam Reinhart (Buffalo) or Thomas Chabot (Ottawa) or the Philadelphia this season 91.7% goalie Carter Hart.

 

has so far 3 players from NHL in their roster, Jakub Voráček (Philadelphia) being the biggest star, then Radko Gudas and Filip Chytil from the NY Rangers already accepted the invitation, in other hand the young rising star Pavel Zácha from New Jersey refused the invitation...

 

from the bottom ranked teams interesting to mention that also has already it´s 1st NHL reinforcement, Michael Raffl (Philadelphia) accepted the invitation and will help our south-west neighbors at the world champs.

 

 

[hckošice 14,822]

Alexander Barkov will not play for at the Worlds, Florida Panthers refused to let him go to Slovakia, because of not favorable exit medical tests.

 

Finland can count on the help of 2 NHLers only so far, the Chicago Blackhawks blueliner Henri Jokiharju and Barkov´s teammate from Florida the forward Juho Lammikko. + they will have the AHL team Rockford IceHogs goalie Kevin Lankinen

[hckošice 14,822]

Team USA announced first 17 players...and what a TEAM it already is Kane, Eichel, Larkin, DeBrincat, Keller

 

 

 

 

[hckošice 14,822]

Road to Bratislava/Košice

 

Exhibition Games

April 18th, 2019

(22 Days to Go)-

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Denmark - Sweden  0-2

Finland - Norway  3-1

Czech Republic - Germany  5-4

Russia - Switzerland  5-2

 

[hckošice 14,822]

2 more NHL "super bombs" for confirmed, The most productive player of this NHL Regular Season the Tampa Bay forward Nikita Kucherov will represent Russia at the World Champs.

 

Just to explain, Kucherov scored this season 41 goals and had 87 assists (128 points) ... and Kucherov will not arrive alone from Tampa, he will be accompanied by the NHL regular season winner goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy

[phelps 7,670]

3 hours ago, hckosice said:

2 more NHL "super bombs" for confirmed, The most productive player of this NHL Regular Season the Tampa Bay forward Nikita Kucherov will represent Russia at the World Champs.

 

Just to explain, Kucherov scored this season 41 goals and had 87 assists (128 points) ... and Kucherov will not arrive alone from Tampa, he will be accompanied by the NHL regular season winner goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy

 

128 points, which is the highest score since Mario Lemieux in the 1995/1996 season (that year super-Mario scored 161 points...but it was another Hockey)...

after that, Jaromir Jagr scored 127 points in 1998/1999 and Joe Thornton 125 in 2005/2006...in the last few years, the winner of the Art Ross Trophy usually was around 105/108 points (if not less, Jamie Benn won the top scorer's award with only 87 points in 2014/2015, negative record in the modern era for a full 82-game season)...

Edited April 19, 2019 by phelps