Sudbury suffers loss to Sweden; ready for semifinals

Hi all.

[On Thursday] in Omsk we woke up early and came to the rink for a morning skate before our game against Sweden’s Linkopings. Both teams have clinched a berth in the Semifinals at the Junior Club World Cup but the winner will win Pool B.

After practice we bussed back to the hotel and had our pre-game meal before having a nap this afternoon.

At 4:45 p.m. we got back on the bus and came to the Blinov Arena for our game. This will be our last game at this rink as we will be moving to the Omsk Arena for the playoff round of the tournament.

The game against Sweden was a good one. We opened the scoring to make it 1-0 on a goal by Sam Schutt [@samuelschutt]. Sweden quickly tied the game and then pushed their lead to 3-1. We fought back as Brody Silk [@silker94] set me up to score the second goal, and Nathan Pancel [@NatePancel] tied it at 3-3. Sweden went ahead 4-3 on a penalty shot late in the period.

Although we had lots of chances we were not able tie the score by the end of the second period. Sweden scored early in the 3rd to take a 5-3 lead, we had to pull the goalie with four minutes to play as we need to win in regulation to win the pool. Unfortunately, Sweden got an empty net goal to close out the game 6-3. This means that we have a date with Belarus on Saturday night in the Semifinals.

Follow Nick Baptiste on Twitter at: @NickBaptiste