Russia needs heavy game against North American speed

TORONTO – There won’t be much secret to Team Russia’s game against Team North America at the World Cup on Monday night.

The contest is a must-win for the Russians and the key is simple – get in on the forecheck and out-muscle the speedy North Americans.

“We’ve got to limit their time and space,” defenseman Dmitry Kulikov said. “Like I said they have speedy wingers, and speedy centers — the whole team is speedy. But if we stay on top of them, if we eliminate their transition, if we chip pucks in and make them be first on the puck in their zone, then we’re going to be in good shape. If we have the puck and make them defend, we’re going to control the pace of the game.”

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The game is a must-win for Russia in the tournament – a loss would severely damage their hopes of making it to the semifinal round. This could add to the country’s long list of ‘best-on-best’ woes in the Alex Ovechkin era. Since Ovechkin played in the 2006 Olympic Games, Russia has not come in the top-three in any ‘best-on-best’ event. It’s not that Ovechkin hasn’t had international success in his career – he’s taken a World Junior gold medal and won three World Championships – but something has misfired with Russia in these events since he’s started playing in them.

Ovechkin scored a goal in the team’s opening game loss to Sweden and thought he scored the tying goal with under 10 seconds left, but the goal was disallowed, which set up Monday’s situation.

“We just don’t have speed through the neutral zone or if we have speed we don’t have support, so we’re trying to be one on one and we see it’s not gonna work,” Ovechkin said after the loss to the Swedes. “I think situation is gonna be changing. You can see how we play in the third period, obviously we score only one goal in the last minute. But I think the chances was there.”

While a lot of the pressure rests on Ovechkin as the face of Russian hockey, his teammates also want to deliver a ‘best-on-best’ win for their country.

“The whole team upset,” winger Vladimir Tarasenko said. “Every loss is a tough loss, especially in a World Cup. All we need to do now is just win the next two games.”

The Czech Republic may have given Russia a blueprint for beating Team North America, which has so far steamrolled Team Europe twice in exhibition play and downed the Finland 4-1 in the first World Cup game.

The Czechs played a heavy style game against North America in the final tournament tune-up by playing physically and bruising their opponent in a 3-2 win. Russia has the ability to play the same way with big, brawny forwards like Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Tarasenko.

“They are a bigger team. Even on the back-end, they have some big guys, and they do play physical but I think Czechs were similar to that and we responded well to that,” forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “We didn’t get the win but I thought could have went either way. We’ve seen that before as a group and we know what to expect tonight so we just have to be prepared.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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