With Jesper Jensen out with a concussion and shoulder surgery, and Dahm presumably being rested for more winnable games against Latvia and Kazakhstan, to say it was a rough game for the Danes would be putting it mildly.
Lars Eller‘s first shift of the game was an excellent one. He bumped Stepan Sannikov off the puck coming toward the Danish net, and took possession of the puck, leading the rush off the ice.
Roman Lyubimov nearly put the puck around Simon Nielsen less than two minutes in, but fortunately Nielsen covered it up.
Alexei Marchenko scored about a minute later on a beautiful feed from Yevgeni Dadonov, past an unsuspecting Nielsen. Scarcely 30 seconds later Markus Lauridsen took a delay of game penalty, which was killed without incident.
Danish captain Morton Green took a penalty for closing his hand over the puck on a face off shortly thereafter, but again, the penalty kill was up to the task, despite several good chances by the likes of Pavel Datsyuk and Artemi Panarin.
Nielsen was absolutely under siege, and through he later crumbled, through the first ten minutes, he made some big saves.
It was not an auspicious start for Markus Lauridsen, as he took a second penalty for sending a Russian player into Nielsen, and Maxim Chudinov scored on a one-timer. Vadim Shipachyov picked up the first of five assists, as did Panarin, and approximately 30 seconds later, Nikita Zaitsev scored.
The Eller, Ehlers, and Hansen had some of Denmark’s only zone time in the period, and Eller had another good defensive play, blocking a shot against the Panarin line, and they escaped the first period down three, despite Datsyuk being left all alone in front of Nielsen at one point. The shots were an appalling 19-2.
Jannik Hansen took a hooking call about forty seconds into the second. Though Russia got a fair number of shots, Denmark escaped the penalty. Eller made a beautiful stretch pass to Hansen coming out of the box, but it was ruled offside. They also escaped yet another penalty kill surprisingly unscathed, though that would be the last time.
On their first shot of the period, and third of the game, Hansen wired a slap shot over Sergei Bobrovsky‘s left shoulder, from a crisp feed by Nikolaj Ehlers. Eller picked up the secondary assist, and the lead was cut to two. However, Sergei Mozyakin scored on the very next shift. He scored again on a crafty feed from Datsyuk, and ten seconds after that, Dadonov scored from Mozyakin, and the game was hopelessly out of reach.
Dadonov, Shipachyov and Panarin absolutely picked apart the Danes, on a flawlessly executed tic-tac-toe goal that Nielsen had exactly zero chance stopping towards the end of the period.
The Danes took yet another penalty for too many men a little over two minutes into the third, and Shipachyov scored on an absolutely wide open net. Russia scored goal number nine on yet another beauty by the Shipachyov, Panarin, Dadonov line, that they made look absolutely effortless.
Eller had a hard shot that Bobrovsky took off the mask, and shortly thereafter, Ehlers had a good chance, also off Bobrovsky’s mask, which led to Denmark’s first powerplay of the night. Bobrovsky left the game before the start of the powerplay, perhaps as a result of the mask save, but the Danes were unable to put one past Ilya Sorokin, despite Ehlers’ best attempts.
With about 4:30 left in the game, Eller took a tripping penalty, and Panarin put the cap on the rout, scoring the 10-1 goal, leaving that line with fourteen points in total on the night. Russia took two penalties in a row after that, giving the Danes a 41 second 5-3, but the game was long over for all intents and purposes. Ehlers and Eller had a really excellent shift on the powerplay though, despite not getting the puck past Sorokin.
After the game got out of hand, Jan Karlsson elected to rest Oliver Lauridsen and the first line a little bit more than he might have otherwise. Eller played a mere 16:07 after racking up nearly 26 minutes of ice time against Switzerland.
Impressively, the Eller line was not on the ice for a single one of the ten goals scored against Denmark, even strength or otherwise, though both Hansen and Eller took penalties that led to Russian power play tallies. Speaking of power plays, Denmark continues to take far, far too many penalties – a trend that simply must stop.
Russia awaits the arrival of Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Dmitry Orlov, and will play Switzerland on Saturday. Denmark is set to play Latvia today at 1:15, and very much needs to pick up a win.
