I actually saw this game late last night/early this morning but haven’t got around to typing anything about it till now. Why? Because you’ve heard it all. This was another game that showed you very clearly how a well coached, and adaptive team like the Canadians can, even on an off day, manhandle an unorganized Russian squad. Despite keeping things even through 2, including a goal by Anisimov (he wasn’t given credit for it at the time it was scored, but he clearly was the one who tipped it in), the Russians really didn’t appear to have what it takes to win. Varlamov was keeping them close with some terrific goaltending (for once), and the Canadians were making things easy on the Russians by not exerting their physical presence, and the Russians in the form of AA even tried a cheapshot of their own with a knee on knee hit (I’ll get to that in a minute). Still, the Canadians turned it on when they had to, and went for the already bone dry jugular of the Russian team.

Regarding the knee on knee hit, you know I am not going to let that one go. It was a stupid, dirty play by AA. I forget who it was he hit, and I’m too busy to look it up at the moment, but whoever it was, it definitely looked intentional to me, and could have been a serious injury for both the players involved, and considering the state of his knee as it is, it wasn’t very smart (though it may have been the other knee this time, I cant remember).

Still, that was the last we will see (Thankfully) from Artem in this pointless, and decidedly one-sided “series”. The rookie is on his way to join the Rangers squad for the Traverse City tournament where the Rangers will be well represented sending this, highly skilled and tough squad:

Anisimov
Barnes
Bourret
Dubinsky
Dupont
Hillier
Korpikoski
Owens
Pyatt
Busto
Potter
Staal
Sauer
Sanguinetti
Lafleur

The players in bold are your “most likely to be NHL’ers” of the bunch, or your players to watch. Either way, its an incredibly strong lineup, with some excellent well rounded players. Though it should be noted one Nigel Dawes is not on this list. Nor is Ryan Callahan or Daniel Girardi. One can only assume this means Nigel will be joining the big club this year since it seems the Rangers feel he will not benefit from this “exercise”.

Regarding the tournament itself, I have been trying fruitlessly to find a way to watch the games, if anyone knows, please contact me on the HFBoards here. However I suspect there is no real way to watch it for us die hards. With that said, there is always the possibility the Rangers On Demand site will have portions of the games, highlights, analysis, or possibly entire games. Of course its also likely they won’t, I guess we will see. However I would suggest 2 things…

Since I will not be seeing these games with my own 2 eyes unless something unexpected pops up, I will refrain from giving any opinions on what has happened there. So that means I will finally have time to do my Eastern Conference Previews. I’m hoping to start in the next few days.

-Inferno

Posted by inferno272 on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 5:15 pm.