02/03/2022 – CanucksBanter

Team ROC

Once again, Russia’s representatives will play without their national flag and anthem due to on-going doping sanctions. However, there’s plenty of cause for optimism as the women’s team tries to win its first ever Olympic medal. Olga Sosina leads the way at her fourth Games, and her performances in last season’s playoff final with Agidel were the very definition of clutch.

Head coach Bobariko, meanwhile, also calls on five players who were part of his U18 teams in recent seasons. Several of them featured in the 2018 championship in Dmitrov, where the Russian youngsters sensationally defeated Canada in the opening game. That’s the first and only time in women’s hockey that a Russian national team has beaten a Canadian counterpart.

Add the big tournament experience of Alexandra Vafina, Angelina Goncharenko, Anna Shokhina and Elena Dergachyova, each of whom are returning for their third Olympics, and there’s plenty of know-how on the roster. Vafina, currently playing for Bobariko’s Dynamo Neva, also has an insight into China’s hockey culture after playing with KRS Vanke Rays last season, while Tornado’s Shokhina, who missed August’s disappointing World Championship campaign, currently leads the WHL in scoring.

Team China

The KRS Vanke Rays were set up to prepare China’s women for Olympic action — and the roster is stacked with players connected to the club. Three of them, however, were part of the Chinese team that played in Vancouver back in 2010. Captain Yu Beiwei, fellow defender Liu Zhixin and forward Zhang Mengying are all poised for a second appearance at the Games, albeit in very different circumstances.

The current Chinese team, led by experienced American coach Brian Idalski, also features young home-grown talent in the shape of Li Qianhua (19) and Zhao Qinan (24) on defense, as well as Zhu Rui (23) and He Xin (25) among the forwards.

However, there is also a significant role for Chinese heritage players on this team. Goalie Kimberly Newell, defender Jessica Wong and forward Hannah Miller are set to make a little bit of history after swapping Canada for China: they will become the first women to play international hockey for two countries after wearing the Maple Leaf in U18 World Championship action before fulfilling their Olympic dreams with the host nation here in Beijing.

China is something of an unknown quantity in Group B. However, the performance of the Vanke Rays in the WHL this season — currently fourth without its import players of recent years — suggests that a place in the quarterfinals is not out of reach.

Jessica Wong. Photo credits: Dmitry Bondarenko

Team Finland

The Finns have been Europe’s strongest team in recent years. Memorably, Finland threatened to shatter the North American stranglehold on the women’s game, reaching the World Championship final in 2019 and losing to the USA in a hugely controversial overtime in Espoo. No other European nation has matched that feat, before or since.

However, the Finns have surprisingly omitted Noora Raty, the KRS Vanke Rays netminder often regarded as the best in the world. She was injured in a friendly against Team Russia almost a year ago and, despite returning to the ice, she was left out of the 2021 World Championship and her international career seems to be over.

Three other Vanke Rays are on the team, though. Minttu Tuominen is coming back to the Chinese club for a second season once the Games are over. The versatile 31-year-old will be joined by forwards Michelle Karvinen and Susanna Tapani, both of whom played briefly for the team in August.

Michelle Karvinen, Anna Prugova. Photo credits: Svetlana Sadykova

Team Czechia

Defender Aneta Tejralova is fifth in WHL scoring this season, with 30 (5+25) points in 22 games for table-topping SKIF. In addition, the 26-year-old former Dynamo St. Petersburg blue liner helped her native Czechia qualify for its first Olympic women’s tournament. She’s joined on the Czech roster by captain Alena Mills, who is set to return to KRS Vanke Rays after the Games, and Biryusa’s long-serving defender Pavlina Horalkova, now in her eighth season in Krasnoyarsk.

Team USA

The defending champion does not have any current WHL players, but two of the most effective players in the league’s history are lining up for the Americans. Alex Carpenter achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in the league when she dominated all-comers in the Vanke Rays’ title-winning campaign of 2019-2020. Defender Megan Bozek was also influential in the championship campaign and played an even more prominent role as the Rays topped the regular season table last term. Both players are looking to add to the silver medals they brought home from Sochi in 2014.

Megan Bozek, Alex Carpenter, Alexandra Vafina. Photo credits: Yury Kuzmin

Team Sweden

Emma Nordin, 30, is once again part of Sweden’s forward line. Like Sosina, the Ornskoldsvik native is heading to her fourth Games. Once finished in Beijing, she’s leaving Lulea to join up with the KRS Vanke Rays for the final weeks of the Russian season.

Tournament prospects

As always, the rivalry between Canada and the USA is likely to determine the gold medal. The Americans came out on top in PyeongChang, ending a long wait for Olympic gold. However, Canada is the current World Champion. When these two go head-to-head, there’s little to choose between them and both nations enjoy far greater depth than their European and Asian rivals.

Finland and ROC will both hope for a medal. The Finns have consistently been Europe’s strongest team in recent years, but the Russians are improving and could benefit from relatively low expectations around their team. Meanwhile, Group B promises to be full of intrigue. Czechia and Denmark are making their Olympic debuts, China is something of an unknown quantity and Sweden will be determined to reassert its status as one of Europe’s leading nations after a run of poor tournaments. It’s hard to see a finalist coming from outside of North America, but the rest of the competition could be wide open.

Team USA made a strong start to its Olympic title defence with a 5-2 victory over third seed Finland. Two goals from captain Kendall Coyne-Schofield and two more from Alex Carpenter led the way for the Americans, with Amanda Kessel also on the scoresheet. For Finland, Olympic debutant Anni Keisala performed bravely in goal, stopping 47 of the 52 shots she faced. Despite her best efforts, after a competitive opening 10 minutes the 2018 bronze medallist was overpowered.

However, Team USA’s impressive win came at a cost with Brianna Decker helped from the ice midway through the first period after injuring her left leg.

Decker, 30, came to Beijing for her third Games, having previously won silver in Sochi and gold in PyeongChang. But her 2022 campaign is in danger of coming to a premature end after she tangled with Finland’s Ronja Savolainen. There was no malice in the incident, but Decker’s awkward fall left her sprawled in pain for a time before she was able to sit up and leave the ice on a trolley.

Captain Coyne-Schofield said: “I think the response you saw from our group shows what she means to this team. We don’t know her status, we hope she’s OK, but it was definitely difficult to see.

“I just told her ‘We got this.’ Whatever happens she’s a big part of this group. There’s no replacing Brianna Decker, but everyone did what they had to do and that’s why we were successful tonight.”

Amanda Kessel opened the scoring soon after play resumed, with the delay for Decker’s treatment seeming to distract Finland more than the Americans. The 30-year-old forward was given far too much space to the left of the Finnish net and she drove along the goal line before going five-hole on Keisala.

The 24-year-old goalie was making her Olympic debut after Finland opted to go without long-serving netminder Noora Raty. The decision has provoked fierce debate back home, but Keisala coped well in difficult circumstances as a powerful U.S. offence began to tighten the screws.

Despite her frequent saves, though, Keisala could do nothing to stop the first power play of the game. Alex Carpenter got on the end of a fine feed from Kelly Pannek – who took Decker’s place on the American PP – and lasered an inch-perfect wrister to the short side, doubling the lead. Carpenter, like Megan Bozek, is returning to the Olympic team after she was cut from PyeongChang. She and Bozek also have extensive experience of playing in China after featuring for the KRS Vanke Rays, a Shenzhen-based franchise in Russia’s Women’s Hockey League.

Carpenter was impressed with how Pannek slotted into a new role, and how the team gelled quickly after relatively little game time this season.

“We put Kelly there and she made no mistake putting it right on my tape,” the goalscorer said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve played an international game, so to go out there and put up the numbers we did was a good start for us.”

For Finnish defender Minnamari Tuominen, the Decker incident was less of an issue than the greater fluency of the American players.

“After an even start to the game, I think maybe the USA started skating a little more than we did – and it shows on the scoreboard,” she said. “Obviously there’s room for improvement, but I thought we fought hard and tried to execute the things we’ve been talking about.”

The middle frame was one-way traffic. Team USA dominated play from start to finish, outshooting the opposition 19-2 and keeping a beleaguered Finnish defence pegged into its own end. It was testament to the hard work of Jenni Hiirokoski and her D-core colleagues that such control only produced two more goals. They came 64 seconds apart, both from Coyne-Schofield, to take the game away.

The first was a devastating wrist shot that flashed through the legs of Nelli Laitinen with Keisala unsighted. Then yet another U.S. face-off win enabled Savannah Harmon to get quick point shot away, knowing that Coyne-Schofield was waiting in front of the net to apply a deft redirect.

Subsequently, Finland’s struggles on the draw ensured that the play remained in front of Keisala’s net. The young goalie performed strongly to keep the score down as the defending champion threatened to run riot in the middle frame.

In the third period, Finland got on the scoreboard at last. Susanna Tapani unleashed a great shot from the top of the circle to convert her team’s second power play of the night and make it 1-4. However, there was little prospect of a fightback and Carpenter got her second of the game when she wrapped up a well-worked combination.

Then came slight confusion at the end. With 2:20 on the clock, Tapani fired in a shot that clipped the inside of the post and bounced out of the net via the camera in the back of the net. The on-ice verdict was no goal, but after the final hooter a video review awarded Finland a second goal. As a result, the teams had to come back to the ice to replay the final two minutes. The Finns, eager to grab a further consolation goal, went six-on-five and gave Maddie Rooney a busier finale at the second time of asking, but could make no further inroads into the 5-2 scoreline.

And, despite the injury to Decker, that result left head coach Joel Johnson happy with how his team began its title defence.

“We played a really good game,” he said. “I thought particularly in the second period, we really established ourselves. It’s always hard the first game of a tournament, but in the Olympics with all the weirdness going on, I was really impressed with our players and I give them a ton of credit.

“Decks is one of our captains and she’s one of the best centres in the world of women’s hockey, so we’re obviously very concerned and we should know more in the coming days, but I was really impressed with the adjustments our lineup made and I don’t think we missed a beat, and that’s just a credit to the depth that we have.”

Source: iihf.com