Earlier today, I attended the first game of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey tournament at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. This was my first time ever going in this arena and it is truly the best hockey arena I have ever been to and also the sixth one on my list along with Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Sunrise (Florida Panthers). The tournament started off with the game against Team USA vs. Team Europe which consists of different NHL players coming from different countries through Europe. But, before I go on with the game I want to talk about my warm up experience.
As usual, I always go down on the glass to watch warm-ups and I know with different arenas have different rules with going on the glass and such. With the ACC, they allow people to sit in any seats near the ice as long as the ticket holders were not there and people cannot stand in the aisle. I stand in the corner of the USA side about four rows or a couple more off the glass and had a pretty good view of the ice. People kept shuffling through the rows and such and at one point the people in the first three rows in the section next to me all got up because Patrick Kane was getting ready to throw a puck into the crowd. I have already wrote my feelings about him and I will continue to not to like him for my reasons that I do not want to repeat. Instead of throwing it into the crowd in front of him. He decided to throw it right in my direction where my dad caught it so it would not hit me in the face and try not to get jumped by the 20 guys trying to climb over me for it. He threw it over in my direction two more times and I really did not understand why until I looked to my right to see his girlfriend standing next to me. I never understood why he kept trying to throw it to her from that far when he could of gave it to another person or even just took a puck from the ice and saved it for her later, but whatever. As much as I love getting the puck, I just did not care for the person who threw it to me.
The puck dropped to start the game and it went back and forward with both teams getting some pretty good shots and having good chances of scoring. But, throughout the game all I kept noticing with Team USA was that they kept playing the same two lines over and over again. This I felt was one of their problems of not playing well tonight. Kane, Joe Pavelski, Ryan Kesler, Zach Parise, Derek Stephan, Ryan Sutter, and John Carlsson were always out on the ice at any given moment. To be completely honest the fourth line was pretty much non existent to this team. While they kept playing the same players over and over again, this caused them to be more tired and cause more turnovers throughout the game which lead to one of Team Europe's goals. If they played the fourth line a little bit longer than two seconds maybe this game could of had a different ending or maybe one or two goals for Team USA.
Another thing that went wrong were the penalties. Kesler was in the box especially during the first period. I understand there are going to be times when players can draw a penalty to the other team, but USA was just not graceful with it. With Team Europe, they were in the box for little things with tripping and too many men and barely saw any penalty minutes which gave them another advantage to this game.
USA just could not keep up with Europe even if they some of the best players in the NHL. Team Europe had the speed skaters and the goal scorers along with a good playing time between all the lines and had a good amount for each line. Yes, the first line always will have more time than the fourth, but Europe gave their fourth line a chance which helped their team in this game along with their amazing goaltending of Halak. Quick did amazing as well for USA, but the rest of the team just could not keep up with the game.
I would have posted this a lot sooner, but I was out and about Toronto all day today especially since I am leaving tomorrow. A little tip for coming up here as well, do the Haunted Walking Tours which are held at night because it teaches the history behind some buildings and some really good stories of some weird experiences going on inside them as well.
Comments
Post a Comment