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Tuesday, August 31, 2004

MEATBALLS VERSUS SAUERKRAUT 

I was only half-paying attention to this morning's World Cup of Hockey tilt between Germany and Sweden, so if any of this post is screwed up, I'll have to check it with a boxscore later because nobody has one up right now.

Sweden beat Germany 5-2, with the Germans being pretty much overmatched. The Germans probably will be overmatched for most of the tournament, since they don't have too many NHLers other than Olaf Kolzig, Marco Sturm, Jochen Hecht, and Marcel Goc.

The Swedes are so good and stacked that the Sedin twins were healthy scratches in this game.

1ST PERIOD
The first period saw a Swede goal by Tomas Holmstrom on a redirect of a Markus Naslund centering pass.

Marco Sturm, who has only been skating for three weeks following a leg injury after a collision last year with Adam Foote, went top shelf for Germany while Tommy Salo laid down on a shorthanded breakaway.

The Swedes won 19 of 25 faceoffs in the first period.

2ND PERIOD
Lots of goals in this period.

Daniel Alfredsson now has a shaved head and was in on two of the Swedish goals, one of which was to Mats Sundin, the other to Kim Johnsson.

The Sundin goal was early in the period, when he took the feed from Alfredsson and unleashed a lightning-quick backhand shot that eluded Kolzig.

Marcus Nilson scored later on a kick-out from Mats Sundin, who was in front of the net.

Daniel Kreutzer scored shorthanded for the Germans on a shot that seemed to go into the top of Tommy Salo's glove pocket, but went past and into the net. The shot would have gone wide if not touched. The CBC didn't hesitate to bring up the shot that bounced off Salo's head against Belarus in the last Olympics. Many times. Arguably, Salo hasn't been the same since, even in NHL play.

In short, look for Mikael Tellqvist to be in net for the Swedes' next Cup game, tomorrow morning against the Czechs.

Kim Johnsson off of a faceoff had his shot redirected by Fredrik Modin to make it 5-2.

3RD PERIOD
Nothing really happened in the 3rd, as the Swedes coasted through, satisfied with the 5-2 lead. There was one near-goal. Kreutzer rifled a shot which went off the top of Salo's glove again, but the puck ended up near the crease. Lewandowski picked the puck out of the air with one of his hands and dropped it into the net. The goal was waved off.

If there's any stat you need to say that the Swedes dominated this game, it's that they outshot the Germans 42-19 and won 53 of the 75 total faceoffs.

CBC's three stars: Mats Sundin, Peter Forsberg, Tomas Holmstrom

The money game is today at 4pm between the USA and Canada. Of course, I know most of you will be watching the Mariners and Blue Jays. I'll be flipping back and forth.

I don't know how either the USA/Canada game or the Mariners/Blue Jays game will turn out tonight, but I'm pretty sure about one thing: people in Toronto will be at home watching the hockey game as opposed to coming out to the SkyDome for two non-playoff teams.

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