We’ll start following the World Championship when it begins Friday afternoon. If you’re taking a look at the schedule on the IIHF site, it appears Eastern Daylight Time is six hours behind the times posted on the site.
All United States games apparently will be broadcast on Universal Sports and on UniversalSports.com; they’ll pick up some others, too (see first link). That begins with the opening game of the tournament, USA-Germany, to be played at a soccer stadium in Gelsenkirchen.
The United States has not medalled since 2004. It has medalled only once since 1996. It has not finished better than third since 1960, when it was credited with victory on the strength of winning Olympic gold (a technicality not repeated in 1980, when no championship was contested). Its last finish better than third that didn’t come from an Olympics was in 1950, a silver. Its only non-Olympic gold was 1933. Most people don’t get into the Worlds. From those results, that’s probably a good thing.
(Aw, heck. At least we’ve got the WJC.)
But we care. (Though slightly less so now that Mario Chitaroni has retired.) To that end, we’ll keep an eye on Kyle Okposo and Jack Hillen for Team USA. Several other Rangers and Islanders, including John Tavares, Marc Staal, Chad Johnson and Michael Del Zotto (Canada), and Matt Gilroy(USA), are competing, not to mention that Scott Gordon is running the United States bench. There are bunches of former Rangers, Wolf Pack types, etc, around, too. Official rosters aren’t up on the IIHF site yet, and I’ve been too out of sorts to check deeply, but if other former Sound Tigers show up, we’ll call them out.
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Back in our corner of the world, Manchester took a 3-2 series lead with a 1-0 win. Jonathan Bernier made 30 saves, and Bud Holloway scored his utterly ridiculous sixth game-winning goal in the Monarchs’ seven playoff wins. (That ties Darren Haydar’s AHL record (2004). Yes, already.) Worcester has to win Friday and Saturday to survive. Out west, Texas tied the West Division final with a 3-2 win that guarantees the series will get to Sunday.