The sixth and final day of games for the World Junior Summer Showcase had two games left on the schedule. They were both rivalry games, the first was between Finland and Sweden, with Finland taking the win 3-1. The second game was between Canada and the United States, with Canada taking the win 6-2.
There were players who stood out, big hits thrown, and several flaws found. However, it is “summer hockey,” and these players have a lot of time to get their games on track. In this article, we’ll look at a few takeaways from the final day, starting with how evenly matched Sweden and Finland were.
Sweden & Finland Evenly Matched
It was impressive to see how evenly matched both Sweden and Finland were. They had similar speed, flowing movement, and although Sweden had more physicality, Finland had the advantage on the scoreboard. The special teams is what really stuck out for both teams, as all four goals in the game were scored on the power play. Finland was able to capitalize on two more power plays than Sweden, even though Sweden had one more power play than Finland overall.
It was interesting to see how closely they played, and it was very close despite Finland having the two-goal lead. Both teams also had one player who stood out throughout the whole showcase, for Finland it was Aatos Koivu, and for Sweden it was Jack Berglund. They both led their teams in play and overall attitude.
Those two will definitely be looked upon to lead when these teams convene in December, and if they hadn’t been compared enough already, they also both finished the showcase with seven points. Berglund had four goals and three assists while Koivu had six goals and one assist. They tied for the lead in overall points while Koivu had the lead for goals. It’ll be interesting to see how well they do when they’ve had more playing time with their teammates.
Canada’s Goaltender Stepped Up
While the USA had some issues that kept them off the scoreboard, they did take a high number of shots; they just didn’t go in because of the Canadian goaltender, Joshua Ravensbergen. He stepped up a lot throughout the game as the United States tried everything they could to get the puck past him. In the first two games he played in the showcase, he made just 17 and 10 saves respectively until their game against USA when he made 26 saves for a .923 save percentage.
If Canada didn’t have an idea of who they wanted in the net, Ravensbergen made a solid case. His size helped him make those saves, but for a taller goaltender, he can move quite quickly, which helped him against the speed of the USA players and will come in handy in the future.
“His calmness out there, he was calm and he didn’t give up many rebounds….rebound control was really good and kept them from having second chances. They’re tough, they go to the net hard, so we have to, by doing that, we didn’t give them the empty net goals,” said Canada’s head coach, Dale Hunter, about their goaltender’s performance.
USA Needs Work
Again, as has been stated multiple times over the past few days and will likely continue to be talked about as well is this is summer hockey. The big thing to remember is this game didn’t have their main stars for either team. While the United States may have lost, they did play quite well and just couldn’t get the puck to go in until the very end.
One of the reasons the USA struggled was their power plays; they had plenty of them, but couldn’t get the setup right. They made some great, strong passing plays, but their shots struggled to make it through, and when they did, the goaltender was ready. They got too caught up in making the perfect play and trying to make the right move rather than just taking the shot.
They also need to work on their communicating skills a bit. They missed several drop passes, and there were a few times the players crashed into each other and not the opposition. Hopefully, these issues will fix themselves by the time December hits, or the United States may be in trouble.
Related: 3 Takeaways From Fifth Day of Games at World Junior Summer Showcase
“The biggest thing, we wanted to observe and get a pulse on the group. I mean, obviously, we were real frustrated on the week. I mean, it was a lot of self-inflicted wounds on penalties. Today, the guys played their tails off tonight. We’re really pleased with the effort the guys put in there…but no one is going to remember what happened in the summer. We’ve got guys that gotta get healthy, we gotta go back to watching guys from September, October, November, and it’s going to be a lot different this winter,” said USA head coach Bob Motzko about what he saw this week.
It was an interesting day of final games, and all the teams had some strong things about their efforts, but also a lot of things to fix before the games get officially underway in December. It’s a long time to wait, but the regular season is just a month or two away, and after that, it’ll be here before we know it, and someone will be awarded a gold medal.
