CANADA READIES FOR RUSSIA
Powerhouses face off for first place
Score another for technology.
It has helped Nick Suzuki grasp this whole Canada-Russia hockey history thing.
Suzuki, a centre with Team Canada at the 2019 World Junior Championship, remembers piling into the family van for trips to tournaments as a youngster and his dad putting on videos of the Summit Series in the back to help make the time pass.
That eight-game set took place in 1972, 27 years or so before Suzuki and the majority of his teammates were born.
We get our latest episode of the rivalry tonight, when the teams finish off preliminary round action on their side of the bracket at Rogers Arena.
The New Year’s Eve game will be for top spot in Group A and the beneficial playoff draw that goes with it, thanks to Canada’s 5-1 win over the Czech Republic on Saturday that improved their record to 3-0.
“It looked very, very different from what I was used to watching in the NHL,” Suzuki, 19, said of those Summit Series contests.
“But it was always really cool to see all the players who had been in the Hall of Fame for a while.
“That was the start (of knowing about the rivalry), and watching world juniors every time Canada played Russia. They’ve always been intense games.”
According to Hockey Canada’s media guide, this will be the 25th time that the teams have met in the world juniors since 1993. Canada holds a 13-10-1 record. It will be the first time they’ve met on New Year’s Eve since the 2013 tournament in Russia. Canada won that game 4-1, led by three assists from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Canada. Russia. New Year’s. They go together for those of us of a certain vintage.
There are people who insist the 1975 New Year’s Eve exhibition showdown at the Montreal Forum between the Montreal Canadiens and the Red Army of the then Soviet Union was the greatest game ever played. It finished as a 3-3 tie, thanks in large part to Red Army goalie Vladislav Tretiak.
That scenario was presented to Suzuki’s linemate Jaret AndersonDolan. He had no idea about it, as you’d expect, giving it a “that’s before my days.”
He did know about the rivalry overall and he did know that world juniors and New Year’s Eve games mean something. He recalled going to the New Year’s game as a young fan at the 2012 tournament, which was shared between Calgary and Edmonton. That particular evening in Edmonton, Team Canada edged the Americans 3-2, behind a goal and an assist from Mark Stone.
Team Canada didn’t play a New Year’s Eve game last year, when the tournament was hosted by Buffalo.
They’ve lost their previous two New Year’s Eve games, with their last win in that meeting a 5-3 triumph over the Americans in Montreal at the 2015 tournament.