Tavares leading Canada at WJC

January 2, 2009   ·   Derek Felix   ·   Jump to comments

While there was a huge NHL game with national exposure yesterday, the future can also be seen on NHL Network where the World Junior Championship tournament is taking place at Scotia Bank Place in Kanata, Ontario- home of the Ottawa Senators.

In case you missed it, Canada fought back from 3-0 down to beat USA 7-4 on the strength of a John Tavares hat trick.

The kid is the real deal. He scored a highlight reel goal (seen above) earlier in the tournament undressing a Czech Republic defenseman before unleashing a quick wrist shot top shelf with three and change left in the first. Everyone’s talked up his awesome hand eye coordination goal in exhibition where he kept a puck which went off the post alive and in mid-air, put it back in. Great stuff. Personally, I liked the other one better because it’s rare that you’ll ever see a player have the chance to pull that off.

That’s the one which got Canada back in it. What a series of moves. You can’t allow him to get that kind of time and space. Of course, the stuff after the goal was scored by Flyers’ former No.1 pick James Van Riesdyk was totally uncalled for and probably only served as extra incentive for Canada to complete the comeback and win the game earning an automatic bye into the semis while the Americans must defeat Slovakia just to get there.

If they advance, Sweden will be awaiting. The other quarter features Russia versus the Czech Republic with the winner having the unenviable task of facing Canada.

One other thought on that game of which I caught the final period before celebrating New Year’s. Despite being largely outplayed in the third, the USA was right there and had three or four solid chances to tie it. They just couldn’t bury them. So, the score is kind of misleading. Tavares scored into an open net dragging a defender before teammate Tyler Ennis’ empty netter closed the scoring.

Who wouldn’t sign up for a rematch for all the marbles? As for who stood out aside from the main attraction, USA’s Colin Wilson sure looked good getting robbed twice. He’s got six points so far. I also like what I saw out of Canadians Cody Hodgson (3-9-12), Zach Boychuk (4-3-7), Angelo Esposito (1-1-2), Thomas Hickey (0-3-3) and Colten Teubert.

Hopefully, I’ll get more of a chance to catch some of the big games later today.