Translated material
To the talent fair
Russian youth team will compete for world championship awards
Today, the World Championship among youth teams (players under 20 years old), one of the rare competitions that is traditionally held at the junction of the Old and New Years, starts in the Swedish cities of Mora and Leksand. The tournament dates back to the 1976/77 season, and the national team of our country invariably comes to the championship as one of the favorites. In Russian history, the youth team won gold three times and over the past ten years only in 2001 and 2004 they remained without awards. The two previous tournaments ended in victory for the Canadians and our “silver”.The current team, led by Evgeniy Popikhin, does not have such bright stars as, for example, Evgeni Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Nikolai Zherdev, who have already left youth and are shining in the National Hockey League. But the squad heading to Sweden also has its own little “stars”. These include Avangard Omsk forward Alexey Cherepanov, who has already scored a dozen goals against opponents in the Super League championship, and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl goalkeeper Semyon Varlamov, selected in the first round of the 2006 NHL draft. Ak Bars defender Vyacheslav Buravchikov, who was among the top five at the 2005 Junior (under 18) World Championship, has already been recruited to the Russian national team. By the way, Buravchikov went to Scandinavia as a captain.
The team consists mainly of guys born no older than 1987, but there are also those who are somewhat ahead of their time in terms of their skill level. The same Cherepanov was born in January 1989, and the defender of the Chelyabinsk “Traktor” who returned to the super league, Yuri Voinov, is much younger than everyone else - he was born in 1990 and will celebrate his 17th birthday only in the middle of next month. Before the team left for Sweden, the children at the Novogorsk training center were given farewell words by the President of the Russian Hockey Federation, Vladislav Tretyak. Moreover, the head of the FHR did not rule out the possibility that someone from this team could qualify for a place in the main Russian team, which will compete at the 2007 World Championships.
Popikhin's team didn't have many sparring sessions on the eve of the world championship. So, in September, the team competed at a tournament in Borlange (Sweden) and finished first, with equal points ahead of the hosts due to a defeat in a personal match - 5:0. The match against the Czech Republic also ended with a dry victory - 2:0, but the Russians lost to the Finns - 2:6. Already in Sweden, some participants in the upcoming tournament played several friendly matches among themselves. Let's highlight the hosts' victory over the Canadians - 3:2, the success of the Americans in the match with the Czechs - 6:3, as well as the quite decent play of the Swiss, who did not lose much to Tre Kronur (2:4) and the USA (3:5) .
Our attention will be partly drawn to the Swiss national team for the simple reason that the forward position here is played by the son of the head coach of the Russian national team, Vyacheslav Bykov, Andrei, who followed in his father’s footsteps and plays in his former club team Friborg-Gotteron. On Thursday he will take the ice against the Russians. In general, our young hockey players were somewhat lucky with the preliminary stage draw. Their opponents in Group B are Belarus, Finland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. Taking third place in this octet, which guarantees continuation of the fight for medals, is unlikely to be some kind of extremely difficult task. But in the five “A” there is a very strong composition of participants - traditionally strong in this age category, Canada, the USA, plus the hosts. It is unlikely that Germany and Slovakia will be able to displace any of these teams in the fight for a place in the top three. According to the regulations, the group winners directly advance to the semi-finals, the teams that take second and third places meet in the play-offs.
Brent Sutter, with whom the team won the last two world championships, left the Canadian youth coaching staff. He was replaced by the famous former Minnesota defender Craig Hartsburg, who managed to work as a mentor for Anaheim and Chicago, although without much success. The composition of the “maple leaves,” despite the presence of a number of players who achieved success a year ago in their homeland, is far from ideal for the reason that some hockey players of this age, including one of the leaders of Pittsburgh, Sidney Crosby, play in the NHL. It is not customary to release players from there to the World Youth Championships.
The most striking personalities of the Stars and Stripes are hockey players named Johnson. 18-year-old defenseman Eric was selected by St. Louis with the first pick in the 2006 draft, the rights to his colleague in the role of Jack belong to Carolina - he was the third pick of last year's talent fair. Almost all the players on the American team are students at “hockey” universities (Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota) and have been playing together for a long time, since in the USA junior and youth teams exist as a separate sports institute.
As for the Swedes, their main hopes are connected with the future teammate of our Alexander Ovechkin in Washington, forward Nicklas Backstrom (4th pick in the 2006 draft). Now this bright hockey player is already one of the top three scorers in the Swedish Eliteserien - 34 (11+23) points in 30 games played for Brunhes.