IIHF World Juniors: Canada vs Sweden - 7:00pm Dec. 19th, 2008

hemlock wrote:Let's not forget about Andre Pettersson and Jim O'Brien.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think Petersson will be an NHLer.

He's a great talent, but his defensive play, size and skating are all draw-backs.

asq2 wrote:

hemlock wrote:Let's not forget about Andre Pettersson and Jim O'Brien.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think Petersson will be an NHLer.

He's a great talent, but his defensive play, size and skating are all draw-backs.

Perhaps not, but he'll still be fun to watch in this tourney.

He's just like the classic late round Wings pick. If he can work on his shortcomings, he could be a nice player.

The thing about the Wings, though, is that they have such a good mentor-system in-place, leading back to Yzerman and Lidstrom.

I like the pick because grinders are a dime a dozen, but I wouldn't expect him to be the next Martin Havlat as some suggest. He's probably only on Sweden because of their poor wing depth.

I've been watching this instead of the Sens.

Through one:
Canada really throwing the body.
Hedman (#4) started slowly but picked up his game toward the end. He got dumped in the first shift, though.
MSP with some good plays defensively.
Tavares (#19) with the only goal of the game, but most of the work was done by Hodgson (#18 ).

As for Karlsson (#5), he's really impressed me in his decision-making. He's not skating at his best, but his hockey IQ is amazing, especially offensively. You can tell Canada is really keying on him, he took a huge hit in the first but did manage an open-icer on (I believe) Patrice Cormier.

He's been one of Sweden's best players so far. He's made some very clever plays defensively and I can't believe how much better he is at starting a break-out than every defenceman on the Sens' roster.

He started with Hedman but played for a while on another pairing, probably to balance out the defence.

Sweden in general seems to be having a tough time adjusting to the smaller ice, it seems.

asq2 wrote:I've been watching this instead of the Sens.

Through one:
Canada really throwing the body.
Hedman (#4) started slowly but picked up his game toward the end. He got dumped in the first shift, though.
MSP with some good plays defensively.
Tavares (#19) with the only goal of the game, but most of the work was done by Hodgson (#18 ).

As for Karlsson (#5), he's really impressed me in his decision-making. He's not skating at his best, but his hockey IQ is amazing, especially offensively. You can tell Canada is really keying on him, he took a huge hit in the first but did manage an open-icer on (I believe) Patrice Cormier.

He's been one of Sweden's best players so far. He's made some very clever plays defensively and I can't believe how much better he is at starting a break-out than every defenceman on the Sens' roster.

He started with Hedman but played for a while on another pairing, probably to balance out the defence.

Sweden in general seems to be having a tough time adjusting to the smaller ice, it seems.

Sweet! Thanks for the update and analysis. Just got home.

Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

asq2 wrote:Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

Sweet. I'm so excited about Karlsson, it's bordeline man-crush. I noticed you changed your avatar. Nice choice Let's hope we can change that jersey to a Sens jersey in about 7 months

hemlock wrote:

asq2 wrote:Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

Sweet. I'm so excited about Karlsson, it's bordeline man-crush. I noticed you changed your avatar. Nice choice Let's hope we can change that jersey to a Sens jersey in about 7 months

Man-crushes eh? Weren't there a few man-crushes over Lee too?

shabbs wrote:

hemlock wrote:

asq2 wrote:Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

Sweet. I'm so excited about Karlsson, it's bordeline man-crush. I noticed you changed your avatar. Nice choice Let's hope we can change that jersey to a Sens jersey in about 7 months

Man-crushes eh? Weren't there a few man-crushes over Lee too?

Heh. I like Lee. I'm not ready to give up on him by any means. I wouldn't say I've ever had a man-crush though :oops:

I watched more of the Sens game this time around, so I missed the second Canada goal, but here's some of what I saw.

Ellis, as irritating as McGuire's gushing about him is, is quite good.
Whoever is #7 for Sweden is pretty impressive.

Karlsson-wise, he picked up an assist on the Moller goal but I was more impressed with him physically. Probably wanting to get payback for the first, he was inches away from smoking (I believe) Eberle, but only slightly hit him, left his feet and got a charging penalty.

While I was a bit hesitant to agree with his Kronwall comparison, I'm starting to agree. Kid's feisty. His physical presence got him some PK time, if I'm not mistaken.

Down-sides are that he while his skating has been fluid, he hasn't been skating top-speed. He also didn't play a 1-on-1 with Tavares all that well.

Still, he's been really impressive for me.

Canada's dominating the game, though.

hemlock wrote:

asq2 wrote:Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

Sweet. I'm so excited about Karlsson, it's bordeline man-crush. I noticed you changed your avatar. Nice choice Let's hope we can change that jersey to a Sens jersey in about 7 months

Oh man, I hope so.

Tavares has outplayed Hedman this game for sure, and Karlsson's probably been the better of the two all night, but Hedman's a beast. We haven't had a guy who can first-unit PP and first-unit PK since Chara, but Hedman easily does both.

So you'll forgive me if I'm not crying for Murray to make changes to the current roster.

Although I still like the idea of Spezza + SJ 1st + Lee for Bogosian + Atl. 1st + some centre.

asq2 wrote:

hemlock wrote:

asq2 wrote:Oh man, Karlsson's incredible. Just made a seem-pass through his legs, and then hit the team Canada player coming out of the zone.

Sweet. I'm so excited about Karlsson, it's bordeline man-crush. I noticed you changed your avatar. Nice choice Let's hope we can change that jersey to a Sens jersey in about 7 months

Oh man, I hope so.

Tavares has outplayed Hedman this game for sure, and Karlsson's probably been the better of the two all night, but Hedman's a beast. We haven't had a guy who can first-unit PP and first-unit PK since Chara, but Hedman easily does both.

So you'll forgive me if I'm not crying for Murray to make changes to the current roster.

Although I still like the idea of Spezza + SJ 1st + Lee for Bogosian + Atl. 1st + some centre.

No kidding. I was just explaining to my wife that I would prefer the Sens to not win another game this year., and she said why, and I'm like "You don't even understand how good this kid is going to be". I had to tell her that there wasn't a guy on the roster not named Alfredsson that I wouldn't trade straight up for him.

Also, I would be doing cartwheels for that deal.

Some people don't like this, but Karlsson looks like Redden quite a bit (better shot, obviously).

He's not big, but he's such a calming influence in the defensive zone for Sweden, cooly flipping the puck to centre-ice against the much bigger Canadian fore-check.

At the beginning of the game, he got no PK time, but the mid point of the second he was getting second-unit PK time, and now in the third he just opened up on the first PK unit.

He and Hedman are generating the majority of Sweden's offence, too.

asq2 wrote:Some people don't like this, but Karlsson looks like Redden quite a bit (better shot, obviously).

He's not big, but he's such a calming influence in the defensive zone for Sweden, cooly flipping the puck to centre-ice against the much bigger Canadian fore-check.

At the beginning of the game, he got no PK time, but the mid point of the second he was getting second-unit PK time, and now in the third he just opened up on the first PK unit.

He and Hedman are generating the majority of Sweden's offence, too.

Well in Redden's defence, early in his career, he played with ice in his veins. Never seemed to get rattled. If that's what you mean, I'm down. Nice to see him taking shifts in all situations too. Is MSP playing? Has he been noticable?

Did you check out that website I PMed you out of curiousity?

Final score Canada 4 - 2 Sweden.

Karlsson was on the ice for the last Canada goal but it was more the fault of Hedman.

We definitely didn't see Hedman's best tonight, with the exception of the last couple minutes where killing a penalty he showed his physical prowess, promptly skated up the ice for a short-handed goal and then on an individual effort almost added another.

Definitely a statement game from Canada, but I wouldn't put much stock into it because they're more used to the ice surface.

Hodsgon was the star of the game IMO, although Sweden's goalie (not Markstrom) was very good as well despite surrendering 4 goals.

Moller and Backlund also looked decent for Sweden. I didn't see much of Andre Petersson.

hemlock wrote:Well in Redden's defence, early in his career, he played with ice in his veins. Never seemed to get rattled. If that's what you mean, I'm down. Nice to see him taking shifts in all situations too. Is MSP playing? Has he been noticable?

Did you check out that website I PMed you out of curiousity?

Just saw the web-site, I'll be sure to check it out.

Yeah, Karlsson's definitely very calm on the ice (apart from when a goal is scored for Sweden).

MSP looks quite big on the ice. It's hard to notice him when Sweden had such difficulty mustering offence, but his acceleration is quite good, his hands are obviously very good and his defensive play was also impressive.

Canada was obviously the better team, though, so unless you're watching a certain player the whole night (like I was with Hedman and Karlsson) it's hard to say too much about him.

It's also nice to see Sweden try to respond to Canada's physical play (despite taking penalties, as Karlsson and Torp did) and pull their goalie when down by 2 and short-handed.

I like their mentality, and think that once they get more used to the ice-surface they'll be tough to beat.

I think the Americans and the Canadians are deeper, though.

asq2 wrote:

hemlock wrote:Well in Redden's defence, early in his career, he played with ice in his veins. Never seemed to get rattled. If that's what you mean, I'm down. Nice to see him taking shifts in all situations too. Is MSP playing? Has he been noticable?

Did you check out that website I PMed you out of curiousity?

Just saw the web-site, I'll be sure to check it out.

Yeah, Karlsson's definitely very calm on the ice (apart from when a goal is scored for Sweden).

MSP looks quote big on the ice. It's hard to notice him when Sweden had such difficulty mustering offence, but his acceleration is quite good, his hands are obviously very good and his defensive play was also impressive.

Canada was obviously the better team, though, so unless you're watching a certain player the whole night (like I was with Hedman and Karlsson) it's hard to say too much about him.

MSP...another one I pine for.

Anyway, thanks for the analysis :D