The World Cup of Hockey was a round robin tournament held in Toronto, Canada beginning on Sept. 17, and gave the fans some excitement to get ready for the upcoming NHL season. ESPN had the television rights to the games and had hockey on their airwaves for the first time in years.
The tournament’s first installment was back in 1996 and was run by the NHL and the NHLPA that which brought all the best players in the world. Now in 2016 the 3rd installment of the tournament was huge success.
This year’s tournament looked a lot different than the past two as far as the teams participating. The tournament saw the inaugural campaign of Team North America and Team Europe, who replaced Team Germany and Team Slovakia who both played in the previous two tournaments. These teams joined Team Canada, U.S.A, Russia, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic.
Team Europe composed of all European countries not represented in the tournament. This allowed players like New York Rangers’ forward Mats Zuccarello from Norway and Anze Kopitar who roams from Slovenia to participate in the tournament.
Team North America was composed of American and Canadian players who were 23 years old or younger. This team was a young dynamic team who was one of the fastest teams this world has ever seen. Rising stars like Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid from Ontario and Calgary Flames Johnny Gaudreau from New Jersey were some few allowed to play for team North America.
The World Cup of Hockey ended the way many expected it to with a Team Canada victory. How the tournament got to that point, though, was a completely different story.
With 2:53 remaining in a game that saw Team Canada trailing Europe 1-0 in game two of what was a best of 3 series, Canada’s ever so clutch Patrice Bergeron of the NHL’s Boston Bruins deflected a shot past Europe and New York Islanders goaltender Jaroslav Halak to tie the score.
The next two minutes were dominated by Europe. Canada and Montreal Canadiens’ goalie Carey Price, with help from the goal post, shut down Europe on multiple occasions. While shorthanded, Canada and Chicago Blackhawk’s forward Jonathan Toews led a two-on-two rush down the ice. He spun around in a circle after entering a zone to feed a perfect pass to Bruins forward Brad Marchand, which was shot perfectly and gave the Canada the go-ahead goal.
With the possibility of NHL players being banned from the Olympics games by the NHL and NHLPA going forward, it was is good to see some international ice hockey competitions at this level of competition. The NHL stated that they want this tournament to happen every four years.
