Finland and Russia open WJC with wins

Germany with nine players unavailable could only dress 14 skaters against Finland. Finland, of course, dominated the game and outshot the Germans 50-22 but the Germans managed to keep the score relatively close.

The Finnish Captain Anton Lundell opened the scoring after only 3:38. Aku Räty made it 2-0 towards the end of the first period and Mikael Pyyhtiä scored 3-0 early in the second. Samuel Dubé scored the first German goal on a powerplay and Tim Stützle cut the lead in half a few minutes later. Finland replied immediately with a goal by Topi Niemelä and yet another by Henri Nikkanen. Germany's Florian Elias scored the only goal of period three for the final score of 3-5.

03:38					0-1		Anton Lundell (Hatakka, Hirvonen)
19:48					0-2		Aku Räty (Nikkanen, Heinola)
21:39					0-3		Mikael Pyyhtiä (Kokkonen, Räty)
25:34					1-3		Samuel Dubé (Volek)
30:35					2-3		Tim Stützle (Peterka, Elias)
31:53					2-4		Topi Niemelä (Simontaival)
33:51					2-5		Henri Nikkanen (Pärssinen, Niemelä)
48:13					3-5		Florian Elias (Stützle)

Vasily Ponomarev scored twice when Russia beat USA 5-3 in the late game on Friday. He got the important opening goal at 8:07 with a nice deflection and the 3-1 goal from the left circle with a shot at the far post. Zakhar Bardakov, Ilya Safonov and Yegor Chinakhov also scored for Russia while Cam York, John Farinacci and Trevor Zegras scored for the Americans.

08:07					1-0		Vasily Ponomarev (Knyazev, Kirsanov)
14:01					1-1		Cam York (Caufield, Boldy)
23:12					2-1		Zakhar Bardakov (Groshev)
31:08					3-1		Vasily Ponomarev
32:15					4-1		Ilya Safonov
49:57					4-2		John Farinacci (Helleson, Brink)
57:42					4-3		Trevor Zegras (York)
59:39					5-3		Yegor Chinakhov (Amirov, Khusnutdinov)

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