Hall, Sid and Eberle key force in Prague
Star line leads Canada to gold-medal tilt
PRAGUE — Taylor Hall played possessed. Jordan Eberle was a force.
“Personally, that’s probably the biggest game I’ve played in like five years,” Hall said. Eberle would say six. Think about that. The last big games for Hall before Saturday’s semifinal at the world hockey championship, which Canada won 2-0 over the host Czech Republic, were the back-to-back Memorial Cup finals he won in 2009-10 with the Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires. The year before Hall was selected in the draft, Eberle was the hero when Canada won a gold medal at the world junior tournament in Ottawa.
The Edmonton Oilers finished 30th the year they picked Hall No. 1 overall.
In his time with the team, they’ve finished 30th, 29th, 24th, 28th and 28th. There’s not a lot of big games in there. “This is a whole new level,” Hall said. “This was huge. It was obviously an extremely important game for our team. It gives us a chance to win a gold medal,” he said of the country’s first trip to the final since 2008 and 2009, when Canada lost to Russia.
“The gold medal game is going to be a game with a lot of emotion. And there are a lot of guys who are searching for our first world championship gold medal, so it’s going to be fun.”
The question has been if maybe Hall and Eberle had forgotten how to win. Apparently not. “Taylor and his linemates had just an exceptional game,” said coach Todd McLellan, who almost certainly will be introduced as the next head coach of the Edmonton Oilers in the next 10 days.
“Obviously, they scored that goal and the most important thing about that goal was that it changed the flow of the game and the momentum of the game in our favour,” he said of Eberle feeding Hall across the crease after his longtime Oilers roommate had earlier zinged one off a crossbar. The goal turned out to be the winner. “Hallsy played really well. Our line played really well,” said Eberle, including the third guy, Sidney Crosby.
Jason Spezza scored the other Canadian goal.
Canada, looking to go 10-0 and win gold for the first time since 2007, will face Russia in the final on Sunday.