It’ll be USA-Czech Republic bright ‘n’ early Thursday morning in the Worlds quarterfinals. The United States won both those must-win games and finished second, taking Tuesday morning’s game 5-4 against Germany. Matt Donovan had one of the Americans’ four go-ahead goals. Johnny Gaudreau’s did it for good. Ovechkinless Russia still beat Belarus to keep the hosts from passing the U.S. into second. Latvia could’ve caught the Finns, but Switzerland held on; Herberts Vasiljevs had an assist on an extra-attacker goal that cut it to 3-2, but that’s how it finished.
On the other side, Czech defenseman Jan Kolar scored in overtime to beat France and give his team third place in the pool, avoiding Russia. France gets the Russians instead. Tomas Marcinko’s tournament ended with a Slovak win over Denmark. And Canada beat Norway to secure first place in that pool.
It’s USA-Czech at 9 a.m. Thursday, Canada-Finland at 1, with the winners to face each other in Saturday’s semifinals. Russia-France and Sweden-Belarus in the other half.
| Name, Country | GP | G | A | Pts | PIM | +/- | SOG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brock Nelson, USA | 7 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +3 | 19 |
| Herberts Vasiljevs, LAT | 7 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | -2 | 8 |
| Matt Donovan, USA | 6 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +1 | 7 |
| Colin McDonald, USA | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | -2 | 4 |
| Mikko Koskinen, FIN | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 0 |
| Anders Nilsson, SWE | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 0 |
| Tomas Marcinko, SVK | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | E | 10 |
| Name, Country | GP | W-L | MP | GA | Svs | Sv Pct | GAA |
| Anders Nilsson, SWE | 6 | 4-1 | 367:38 | 9 | 129 | .935 | 1.47 |
| Mikko Koskinen, FIN | 1 | 0-1 | 58:12 | 4 | 22 | .846 | 4.12 |
Interesting note from high schools: The national federation has made all boarding penalties and check-from-behind penalties majors or greater next season. The push (so to speak), the Star Tribune reports, came from Minnesota’s changes after Jack Jablonski’s devastating injury.
Justin Bourne on the Rangers’ countering the Habs’ lost-faceoff forecheck. Neat as always.
And Las Vegas, without an arena, had to suspend operations in the ECHL. Speaking of which, Bakersfield came home with a split in Alaska in the Western Conference Final. If that series goes seven, they’ll play the last five games in six days with a trip to Alaska after the first three.