EHM The Blue Line

...that former 7th d-man of Jyp in middle-00's.

Quarter-finals:
Czech Rep. - USA
Sweden - Germany
Finland - Norway
Canada - Russia

Yeah, not a fan of how much Russia has struggled. They will be hungry. Canada is a young, fragile team who will be easy to beat if Russia plays to their potential.

Tough draw for a number 1 seed. I was kind of hoping that they would lose against Sweden so that they could play Germany.

Russians game looks horrible. It has gone 10 years backwards at last 2 years. At 2000, they were host country and had brothers of Bure, Gonchar, Afinogenov, Yashin, Viktor Kozlov on their roster, but still they lost to Switzerland (2-3), Latvia (2-3) and Belarus (0-1) and finished 11th in tournament. They had no team-spirit, they were just names on paper. It seems pretty same now, however they are in quarter-finals.

Anyway, it will be tough match between those rivalry countries. But Finland will be lucky, cause they have afternoon game and if they win Norwegians they will have more time to rest and next day they'll play against tired Canada/Russia.

Btw, why there's no discussion about Artyukhin? He has been interesting player in this tournament..

Yeah, he has been a one man wrecking crew. Check out these articles/videos!

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_d ... nhl-wp4435

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_d ... nhl-wp3439

The second one he pretty much takes on the entire finish team like a bull in a china shop. It's pretty nuts.

I rate him very good power forward, who is important for your team but one sort of fool for opposites. Check his first shift in Russia-Finland game yesterday, 3 very hard hits and a goal. Then he hit Finland's goalie and Finlands d-man got mad about this and started a lil wrestling with Artyukhin. Result: Finland's defender to box and powerplay for Russia . Opposites rate him dirty player who doesn't make respect for hockey, but I don't see him any worse than older Ruutu. And our Czech's, don't get mad, but I can't stand why Czech Rep. players didn't shook hands with Artyukhin after the game. It is unsportsmanship and childlish. Hockey is the game with hard hits and injuries.

That second video was weird from that weird Euro Hockey Tour -match, Ruutu hits Russian's d-man and then Artyukhin, who doesn't know who hit whom, starts to hit everyone on ice.

Watching Czech vs. US right now and all I can say is Jagr > USA.

Jagr scored a hat trick when Czech won 4-0.

I saw the game, too. Neither team was very impressive. Jagr and Plekanec was very good, though.
I can't believe the scrubs US sent. Komisarek? Stapleton? Mike 'frickin' Brown!
When one of your top players are an unknown college-player like Craig Smith then you can't expect to be succesful

Their goalies haven't been good either, it looks like there has been Juan-Pablo Montoya instead of Al Montoya.

Sweden won against Germany. 5:2

Good tournament from our boys and probably the direct Olympic qualification.

Well, Canada is out

Semifinals: Sweden-Czech and Finland-Russia. I hope in Czech-Finland finals

Effing Russia. Every World Championships they beat us.

To be honest, I'm disappointed with the Canada result. Russia has been playing garbage the whole tournament, and I don't think they deserved that win, but they were just better finishing their chances...

The Czechs have impressed me the most so far, so Češi do toho!

Not every. This time they played dirty and your young squad was too afraid of them I guess. Hitchcock risked that and this is the result. I cheered for you this time.

Círyatan wrote:The Czechs have impressed me the most so far, so Češi do toho!

Thanks, Círyatan. To be honest, I'm a bit afraid of our record 7-0-0 so far... Looks like we must struggle at some point.

Too bad Canada! Disappointing for sure.

I hope that Sweden wins today, but I think that Czech will beat us because if you look at the rosters Czech's roster is better then Sweden's. And plus they got Jagr, who's really on fire this tournament.

So.. Czech - Russia in bronze game and Sweden - Finland in finals.

Czech is going to "win" bronze, that's for sure.. not sure about gold medal. I'll afraid that Sweden scores game winning goal in time 59.59.

Btw if you haven't heard yet - yesterday in Finland-Russia game Mikael Granlund scored pretty sweet goal.
It is a goal of the year contender in TSN.
Here's link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9B412oN9MA

Hey, I'm back and just for medal games !!

I've been helping my grandpa with fixing garage roof. BTW, at Thursday, just before Finland-Norway -match, I found old newspaper (it was in under sawdust that was used as insulating material that time) of -54 that had news about how Norway won Finland 4-1 in exhibition match. Other newspaper was about -54 World Championships, Soviet Union had won Finland 10-2. Those news made me predict hard matches for Finland. Lucky that was almost 60 years ago.

Ten minutes and 2-2.

I cheer for Suomi this year. We had the opportunity to party with a couple of Finns, and they are great buddies and THE best fans in the world. Both teams are stacked with young guns, that kind we can only dream of here in Slovakia. Great tournament, great bronze medal game, hopefully great finals. I will miss the rush, Bratislava was finally alive with all the tourists coming in.

FINLAAAAAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FInally, after 16 years!!

Party time!!!
See you again in next year..!

6-1!!! Finally!

Yeah baby!
Incredible final! At the start of the third period i was still afraid we might see another disappointment, but this year the team really put on a show! Mikko Koivu is incredible, 11 medals from the 11 tournaments he's represented Finland and finally he gets the gold!

Congrats, finnish mates! Btw. do you know the only team that beat you?

And for us The bronze medal game was crazy but finally we managed to score 7 goals to Russia.
Ovechkin made 0 points during championship and 3 big mistakes in bronze medal game.