Calgary Flames at the World Championship: May 7th Recap
By Ramina Shlah
It’s day three of the World Championship and Johnny Gaudreau of the Calgary Flames continues to shine for Team USA. Let’s check out how he did.
Like we all know, the Calgary Flames have two players in Europe right now battling it out for a gold medal at the World Championship. Johnny Gaudreau and Chad Johnson. Team Canada and Team USA both had their second games today. Chad Johnson was finally in net for Canada’s second win with a stomping 7-2 win against Team Slovenia. Slovenia did only muster up 14 shots on net and Chad only stopped 12 of 14, but at least they got the win!
Team USA however just played their second game and with Gaudreau playing on a bigger rink, you know he’s bound to shine. We all know Johnny loves having room to skate around. Why do you think he does so well with 3-on-3?
With an unfortunate 2-1 loss to Team Germany the other day, USA definitely came back. The loss was unfortunate because USA was definitely the better of the two teams for the majority of the game, but Thomas Greiss came through for the Germans and they took that one 2-1. Johnny however was on fire all game. Making plays, shooting the puck, how much he played, etc. It may have not showed up on the scoresheet then, but it showed up today.
Team USA had a big comeback from their loss, with a 7-2 win over Team Denmark.
Calgary Flames
Via USA Hockey:
"“It was nice to get a win under our belts,” said Jeff Blashill, head coach of the 2017 U.S. Men’s National Team. “We did some good things tonight. I thought our power play took a step forward. We have plenty to work on, particularly from a defensive standpoint, but I really like the team we have and we’ll see how we do in our next test tomorrow night against a very good Sweden team.”"
And Johnny? Well he finally showed up on the scoresheet. He had a goal and an assist. Anders Lee opened up the scoring early on with a powerplay goal about five minutes into the game. Gaudreau had the primary assist on that goal (yay Johnny!).
He later in the period had a powerplay deflection goal from Dylan Larkin to give Team USA a 3-1 lead after 20 minutes of play. He then later drew a penalty and was on the ice for the powerplay, but unfortunately didn’t show up on the scoresheet for that one.
It’s alright! There are definitely more ways to contribute than just getting goals. Although those do help.
In this game, Gaudreau was tied for most shots among all USA skaters with 4 and was second among all forwards for ice-time with 17:03, right after line-mate Jack Eichel. He got so much ice time because of how much PP time he had. Thank for the indiscipline, Denmark.
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Safe to say that Gaudreau is an important part of this team and he hasn’t slowed down an inch from the season. If anything, he’s definitely improved since his somewhat quietness in the playoffs.