Russian nightmare

Russia had everything prepared for a long playoff run at the 2013 World Championship. After being thrown out of the first round of the Stanley Cup finals with his Washington Capitals in game 7 against the New York Rangers, their superstar Alexander Ovechkin immidiately joined the national team in Helsinki. With him and players like Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexander Radulov and Evgeny Kuznetsov, the East Europeans almost had their best Olympic squad on the ice but this was not enough to beat a young and at the senior level internationally very unexperienced Team USA.  

The first minutes of the game already showed that it wouldn't be an easy walk-through for the Russians who had beaten Team USA 5-3 during the group stage. Both teams started very nervous and concentrated rather on their defense and avoiding early mistakes than going for attack themselves. More or less out of the blue team captain Paul Stastny opened the score for the Americans at 11:53 when he used a back hand pass by Craig Smith to score from short distance against Russia's starting goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. Not even a minute later it became even worse for the Russians when TJ Oshie doubled the American lead with a precise shot from the right circle after a combination with Tim Stapleton. When the game seemed to be completely in the hands of the US boys the Russians answered through a one-timer from short distance by Alexander Svitov who used a nice cross-pass from the right wing by Sergei Soin to score the 1-2.

With the momentum on their side the Russians increased their pressure significantly at the start of the middle period but all their chances were denied by the once more very calm and clever US goalie John Gibson. With the time progressing the Russians became more and more impatient and after several aggressions the atmosphere heated up. At 25:45 the Nate Thompson used a cross-pass by Ryan Carter to end an American 2-on-3 attack with another goal. The Russians continued as before but either had no luck (when Ovechkin missed the bouncing puck with the net wide open just two metres in front of him) or Gibson was too strong for them (when Kuznetsov was stopped with a blast from within the slot). At 37:31 the Americans ended one of their rare attacks with the 4-1 through Alex Galchenyuk who received the puck just in front of Bryzgalov and deked him out to the right to score into the empty net. This was also the end of the working day for the Russian goalie as he was immidiately substituted by Semyon Varlamov.

Despite having a three-goal deficit in mind, the Russians came out of the dressing rooms with a lot of energy for the thid period and were soon rewarded by a goal of Alexander Ovechkin from the right circle. It first looked like the puck hit the crossbar after Gibson deflected the shot with his glove hand but after the video review it was clear that the back of the net was hit. Not even a minute later Alexander Radulov lost the puck against Ryan Carter inside the neutral zone during a Russian power play and Carter fired the puck past Varlamov into the right top corner for the shorthander! An at this point very open game developed in which again not even a minute later Alexander Perezhogin used another cross-pass to get the 3-5 in the very same power play. The last hopes for Russia were ended wihen Fyodor Tyutin caused an incredibly stupid penalty in front of his own net when there was absolutely no danger and the Americans scored the 6-3 with the following power play at 48:11 when Jacob Trouba deflected a blue line shot. Now the Russians fell completely apart and allowed another two quick goals through David Moss and Paul Stastny for the final score of Russia 3 USA 8! In the last 10 minutes both teams didn't do more than necessary, the USA to save engery and Russia to avoid an even bigger loss.

After their superb performance today the USA have reached the semifinals who then will be played in Stockholm on Saturday where they'll face the winner of the match between Switzerland and Czech Republic of the other WC group. 

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