Canada Out-Muscles Germany 5-1

Canada’s World Junior hockey squad scored a 5-1 victory over their counterparts from Germany on Monday night.

Although the score seems one-sided and the shots on goal favored the Canadians, the game was full of high speed and hard hitting action.

The Germans seemed to want to turn the game into a street-fight and the Canadians were only too willing to respond. The result: lots of heavy hitting, great checks and penalties.

Many of the penalties (to both sides) were borderline at best or “phantom calls”. Like most international hockey games, the officiating is often less than good and many times it is just downright awful!

Barrie Colts and Washington Capital’s draft pick, Stefan Della Rovere of Maple Ontario seemed to be running all over the ice delivering awesome bodychecks. The 5'11 200 pound forward was sentenced to the sin bin three times, but in reality he should probably only have cooled his heels in the penalty box once.

For two periods the Germans kept the score close by frustrating the Canadians at every turn. (not the mention great goaltending by the German netminder) But the turning point in the game had to be Belleville Bulls defenseman PK Subban’s dramatic end-to-end rush which resulted in a foiled scoring attempt but the rebound was banged home by Evander Kane for a 3-1 lead.

After that goal the Germans played nastier and the Canadians just did what they do best, hit hard and score goals.

Zach Boychuk led the assault on the German goal with two goals and lots of other nifty plays.

Chet Pickard got the start between the pipes for Canada facing only 14 shots. The one that got behind him was a screen shot from the point on a power play.

NEXT UP: The games are only going to get more difficult for Team Canada. On New Year’s Eve they meet Team USA in a match that has all the marks of being something special. The stakes will be high as the winner will most likely get a bye into the Semi-final round.