Canada needed to get the scoring engines going today, and that they did. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins showed why he’s already an NHLer, racking up 1 goal and 4 assists on the 9 goals scored by team Canada.
8 different Canadian players scored against Germany, and only 5 roster players went without points.
Mark Scheifele lead the team on the goalscoring and shooting front, with two goals set up by Nugent-Hopkins and a whopping 8 shots. Canada fired 46 shots on Germany’s net overall.
Surprisingly Germany was able to get some offense going today too, getting 3 goals by a relatively shaky Malcolm Subban. Subban’s .893 save percentage from today is not impressive at all for this tournament, but coach Steve Spott was satisfied with the play behind the numbers and said Subban will be his guy for game 2 against Slovakia.
While it can be slightly confusing for some that Spott would go with Subban over Jordan Binnington after the latter has played better so far, it is commendable that Spott would go with process over result. Subban is a more talented goaltender, even if he’s yet to settle in, and Spott is giving him the opportunity to get comfortable as he believes he’s the better goalie in the long run.
After struggling mightily with discipline in the preliminary games, Canada took 4 minor penalties this morning, and scored a short handed goal.
Next up for Canada is Slovakia at 4:30AM EST on December 28th, while we’ll have a game thread going for Gernany’s game against the United States tomorrow morning at 9:00AM EST.
