It will be a golden night in Buffalo.
Canada and Russia meet this evening at HSBC Arena for the gold medal match of the World Junior Hockey Championships. Game time is 8:30 pm AST with TSN beginning their coverage with the pre-game show at 8:00 pm.
On the team is Saint John Sea Dogs defenseman Simon Despres, who will look to join Chris DiDomenico as players from the club to win world junior gold. The Pittsburgh Penguins prospect has gotten gradually better each game.
"Honestly he's doing really good, over my expectations," said assistant coach Andre Tourigny of the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies to the Telegraph-Journal.
Despres and his defense partner Erik Gudbranson have been solid and played a key role in shutting down the Americans in Monday’s semi-final. The ‘Big Horse’ has three assists so far and joins Gudbranson and Quinton Howden with an impressive +8 rating, the second highest total on the team.
Canada is coming off a dominating victory over the United States on Monday, beating the home team 4-1 and playing a near perfect game. But now, the Canucks must forget that game and look forward to tonight’s match which is for all the marbles.
Russia has been a great story at the world juniors. They opened the tournament will loses against both Canada and Sweden. Wins against Norway and the Czech Republic propelled them into a quarter-final match against Finland where some late game heroics allowed the team to move forward.
In the semi-final against the 4-0 Swedes, the Russians jumped out to a 2-0 lead and entered the third up 2-1. But Sweden turned on the jets, scoring twice and holding onto a 3-2 lead entering the final two minutes. With 1:27 to go in the game, the Russians tied it and won in a shootout to move on to the gold medal game.
Canada and Russia met on Boxing Day with the red and white coming on out on top, 6-3.
The Canadians are led offensively by Brayden Schenn, who has seven goals and nine assists for 16 points. The Russians are led by Dmitri Orlov and Valdimir Tarasenko who have nine points each.
Mark Visentin will start in goal for Canada while the Russians will likely start Dmitri Shikin.
JURCO COMING BACK
Tomas Jurco and the Slovaks closed out the relegation round yesterday with a 5-2 loss to the Czech Republic.
Jurco had no points, shots, or penalty minutes in the game. He finishes the world juniors with one goal, no assists, and eight shots on net.
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