Bucks down Eagles and China gets another point

Weird things are afoot in the Asia League. The Eagles are finally starting to show some weakness. After losing to the Bucks in overtime on Thursday, they lost in regulation on Saturday night.  The Dragon seem to do being better against higher ranked teams. Earlier in the season they lost only 3-2 against the Eagles, and this time took the Cranes to overtime for a loss. While playing lower ranked teams like High1 and Halla they get blown out of the water often.

Icebucks vs Eagles 2-1

In Thursday night’s win over the Eagles, Takahito Suzuki was the hero, scoring the second goal and the winner in the shootout.   On Saturday, He was again leading the way scoring the only goal until very late in the game. He scored early in the third to put the Bucks up 1-0 while on the power play. With 90 seconds left, the Eagles pulled the goalie to try and tie it, but Hiroki Ueno got the puck into the open net. The Eagles did score a few seconds later to make it 2-1 which prompted them to pull their goalie again, but they were unable to score to tie the game. David Bonk received an unspecified 10 minute misconduct in the game. The Eagles outshot the Bucks 40-22.

Nobumasa Kinugasa, team manager for the Bucks, said “It was really tough against Oji. They are very talented and a solid defensive team. Coaches Pederson and Tadahiro are always talking about defense first and the players followed a 60 minute plan”. He added that they thought they still had a chance to make the playoffs, and the players are simply trying to work hard every shift.

Dragon vs Cranes 5-6 GWS

The Dragon came oh so close to winning against the Cranes on Saturday. Despite being heavily out shot in most periods Daisuke Sakai stood tall against the Cranes holding them off for most of the game. The Cranes started quickly scoring only 90 seconds into the game, but in the second period the Dragon got rolling. Ryan Burkholder tied it up early in the second, and then the Cranes took the lead back mid-way through with goals from Shin and Hiroshi Sato. However, 30 seconds later Kota Tanaka scored for China and then Dachuan Guo tied it up at 3. Only a minute into the third period Guo scored again putting giving China the lead. With a little over three minutes to go, China took a 5-3 lead on a goal from Sho Tanaka. While they looked in control, they eventually couldn’t hold on against the Cranes. The Cranes pulled the goalie with a little over 2 minutes to go and scored 30 seconds later. With 90 seconds left they pulled the goalie again and with only 15 seconds left in the game they managed to tie it up. China managed to hold on through the entire overtime and take it to a shootout, but Radja scored the winner for the Cranes.

Guo had 2 goals, and Sho Tanaka had a goal and 2 assists. Nishiwaka had 2 goals and Radja had a goal and 2 assists for the Cranes. While China got little more than a point for this game, and ultimately lost, the close score, and near victory for their team shows very positive signs of improvement for the team. A lucky bounce at the end of the game might have given them an empty net opportunity against the Cranes which would have sealed the game in their favor. With solid off-season training the team may become an even greater threat next season.

At some point, Halla is going to have to seriously address the issue of goaltending in their organization. 2 years ago Ho-sung Son was the go-to netminder for Halla. He was solid and helped take the team to their first Championship. The team was confident and strong in front of him. However, due to Korean national military service rules he had to take a 2 year break while doing his service. This is a problem that impacts a lot of Korean sports teams, as well as the entertainment industries as all men have to go do a minimum two year military service in some fashion. Only this year is the military going to introduce an ice hockey team to help keep the guys in shape, but it doesn’t address what it does to teams like Halla and High1 who lose good players at key points to this. For many sports if the individual or players become champions at a high level they get exempted from this service, so little regard does Korea have for the sport of Ice Hockey that it is one of the few that do not get an exemption.

With Son still getting into playing shape and Park off to military service, Halla chose to start Hyun-Seung Eum again.  There is no way around it, but to say the consistency isn’t there. In the past he’s had some great games, and great saves, but from time to time he looks shaky and this was one of those games.

Sang-wook  got Halla on the board first, but then it was all Freeblades. Kashino and Wrigley scored goals only a minute apart to give the Freeblades a lead they’d never lose. Tanaka also scored mid-way through the period putting them up 3-1. There was a glimmer of hope a couple of minutes later when Radunske scored making it 3-2.  Shots were nearly even through the first.

In the second period Halla took some heavy penalties. The Freeblades went up 4-2 on a goal from Farynuk. A few seconds after an expired Halla penalty, Radunske walked in, through several Freeblades players and buried a top shelf shot past the surprised Blades’ netminder. It again spurred Halla, but only two minutes later Kikuchi scored for the Blades putting them back up 5-3, then Ryo Tanaka scored 2 minutes after that as it looked like the Blades were going to run away with it. Halla was outshot 16-11 in the period.

In the third, Halla drew close again, making it 6-4 early on, but a couple of minutes later the Blades scored again. It seemed that no matter what effort Halla made, the Blades were right there to shut them down again. Woo-je sung made it 7-5 with seven minutes to go in the game, which prompted Halla to pull the goalie with nearly two and a half minutes left. It would prove costly as after about 30 seconds Ryo Tanaka got the puck and put it in the empty net. Halla scored a minute later to make it 8-6, but it was too late at that point. Halla fired all barrels in the third outshooting the Blades 19 to 5.  While Hashimoto is to be commended for holding on as well as he did, allowing just 3 goals on 19 shots, questions have to be raised at the other end of the rink. The numbers just aren’t good, and it is a scenario that has happened in many games before where Halla struggles and plays hard to score goals only to have the other team seemingly walk in a score without effort.

At the end of the game there were some slashes, and pokes with sticks that degenerated into shoving and eventually a full-out fight, with the gloves actually off, between Tae-hwan and Ryo Tanaka. Tanaka seemed completely unprepared for Tae-hwan’s fury as two officials had to pull him as Tanaka was almost tossed about like a ragdoll. Radunske had 2 goals and 2 assists for Halla and Ryo and Kashino each had 2 goals for the Blades.

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