Playoff & World Championship Dailies 5/7/17

Good morning all. By the time you read this the Worlds will be through at least one set of games with 2 more scheduled for the day. The Western Conference gets a day-night double with Edmonton and St Looey facing elimination

Worlds

Russia played Italy and Canada played Slovakia at 6am ET, did you miss those? Yeah, I did too.

10am ET - Team USA vs the Danes in Germany. JT Compher and the US look to overcome a loss to host Germany. Maybe the coach will let JT play more than 9 minutes this time.

10am ET - Finland vs France in France. Mikko had an assist in the Finns victory over Belorus, now they try to take down their gracious hosts

Latvia, Slovakia, Norway and Switzerland are all in action around 2pm ET if you’re into that

Tomorrow Canada & Russia play (not each other) at 10am ET and the US takes on Sweden at 2pm ET

NHL

Hopefully Nashville can do everyone a favor and get rid of the Bloos and their horrible brand of hockey today, both series they’ve been involved in have been absolutely painful to watch. I think it says something about the Central Division when teams that play like this gravitate to the top. Like it’s a bad division and the style of play is just a quicker version of the AHL. Unfortunately I think Jared Bednar wants the Avs to play like this too, thus adding to the problem.

I think everyone wants to see more of the Pacific finals. Tonight we East Coasters get a chance to see an entire game before bedtime, so let’s enjoy.

3pm ET - Bloos at Preds on NBC, Preds up 3-2

7pm ET - Ducks at Oilers on NBCSN, Anaheim squeaked out game 5 to take a 3-2 lead

ECHL

Our beloved Eagles try a second time to eliminate the defending champ Americans this afternoon but they’ve got some issues to overcome. Top scorer, not just on the team but in the league, Alex Belzile was suspended for 2 games for a crosscheck late in game 4. He will also miss either game 6 or game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. Mason Geertsen was also suspended a game for an altercation in the final 5 minutes of a game back on Thursday. The Eagles have plenty of talent to overcome losing these two and they really should before they get in to a situation having to go back to Texas.

Toledo eliminated Ft Wayne last night and awaits the winner of this series in the Western Conference Championships.

Series: 3-1 Colorado

Game: 5pm ET, 3pm local at the Bud Events Center and on ECHL Live.

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MORNING UPDATE

Nathan MacKinnon had a hat trick plus an assist vs Slovenia early this morning, also managed 7 SOG in a little less tha 15 minutes of ice time. Tyson Barrie added a goal and 3 assists and now leads the tourney with 6 points. The Canadians won 7-2 and outshot SLO 51-14, the Slovenian coach remarked after the game that they were taught a lesson in how to play hockey. Btw, that wasn’t Calvin giving up 2 goals on 14 shots, Chad Johnson got the start.

Russia had an even easier time vs the Italians, scoring 10 goals (6 of which were from the PP) on 36 shots while giving up just a single on 15. Andrei Mironov played a bunch more than he did in Game 1 and actually led all Russian Ds in ice time in the 3rd period. What’s nice to see is that he was given 33 shifts compared to just 17 last game and his average shift length went way down from around 50 secs per to 33 secs per.