Finland and Russia open WJC with wins

26 Dec 2020Henrik Lundqvist»

Finland beat Germany 5-3 and Russia beat USA with the same figures on the opening day of the World Juniors in Edmonton.

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.

Germany

3-5

Finland

Periods:
Shots:

0-2
(4-18)

2-3
(7-15)

1-0
(11-17)

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.

Russia

5-3

USA

Periods:
Shots:

1-1
(8-5)

3-0
(7-10)

1-2
(9-11)

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)