Upstart Belarusians no match for high octane Canadian attack

For betting folks, hopefully those hoping for a big money win by seeing a tie or even a regulation win by Belarus over Canada had their hopes erased fairly quickly. Although even making the quarterfinals was quite a success for the Belarusians, the offensive giant known as Canada made it clear in the first period that there would be nothing more than further target practice going on for Team Canada.

Things started off for Belarus much like they had for most of Canada’s opponents in this tournament. After just 27 seconds, it was Brent Burns who got the puck past Belarus’ Canadian goalie Kevin Lalande off of passes from Sidney Crosby and Taylor Hall.

After that, Belarus managed to quiet things down a bit as Canada controlled play, but couldn’t quite get the puck in the net. Until the 7:36 mark, when tricky Tyler Ennis wristed one past Lalande on the stick side after a pass from the boards from Tyson Barrie. Jake Muzzin also got an assist on the play.

This opened the flood gates.

Less than three minutes later, Ryan O’Reilly tipped in a Burns shot to give Canada the 3-0 lead and good seven minutes later, the Canadians made use of the only power play opportunity of the period when Tyler Seguin slapped one past Lalande off a pass from Jason Spezza.

With a 20-3 lead in shots, Canada finished off the first period with a semifinal bid pretty much in the bag.

It was more of the same in the second period when Canada controlled the play for the first three minutes and Seguin pumped in his second of the game assisted by Muzzin and Sean Couturier.

The choruses of ‘Belarus, Belarus, Belarus’ weren’t able to change things on the ice, where Canada continued to look as though they were just playing pond hockey. Getting their second power play opportunity, it only took 23 seconds for Burns to get his second goal of the game on an O’Reilly set-up also assisted by Jordan Eberle.

A breakaway attempt by Belarus as well as a 3-on-2 opportunity came to a dramatic end when Mike Smith stood up to the task and closed the gates, safely keeping a desperate Belarus team off the scoreboard.

By the time the 2^nd period was over, the Belarusians had indeed managed 13 shots in the period, but were being outshot in total 38-16.

Back and forth play was the game story until the Seguin tipped in his third goal of the game off a clever pass from Hall from the goal line. Six minutes later, O’Reilly gobbled up a puck in from of the Belarusian goal and potted his second goal of the day to give Canada the 8-0 lead.

At that point, this game looked very much like a number of others in the tournament.

A Jason Spezza goal with 4:41 to play on a strong fake and then a blast past Lalande got the Canadians one step closer to their third double digit performance of the tournament.

But they had to settle with the 9-0 victory.

Outshooting Belarus 50-23, Canada will await their next opponent for the semifinals this Saturday.

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