The 2017 IIHF World Championships are taking place in Paris, France and Cologne, Germany.
The Championship is made up of 16 teams divided into two groups.
Group A includes Germany, Russia, Sweden, United States, Slovakia, Latvia, Denmark and Italy.
Group B contains Canada, Finland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Norway, France and Slovenia.
The top four ranked teams from each group following the preliminary round advance to the single-elimination quarterfinal.
The overall bottom ranked two teams will be relegated to the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group A.
The 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship will consist of 16 teams including the team of the organizing member national association, thus Denmark cannot be among the two relegated teams.
The teams promoted to the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship will be the top two teams of the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group A.
Venues: AccorHotels Arena – Paris France and Lanxess Arena – Cologne, Germany
Mascots: Asterix and Obelix – main characters in the French comic book series, The
Adventures of Asterix.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are well represented at the World Championships with eight players and coach Jon Cooper taking part.
Team Canada has rookie Brayden Point and Alex Killorn skating for Jon Cooper.
Team Russia features goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, forwards Nikita Kucherov, Nikita Gusev and Vladislav Namestnikov.
Team Sweden boasts a solid blueline with Norris Trophy Finalist Victor Hedman and the always reliable Anton Stralman.
On Saturday, Sweden rebounded from their opening night loss with a commanding 7-2 win over Germany.
Jon Cooper’s defending champion Team Canada and Team Russia continued their strong starts at the IIHF World Championship tournament. Both had electrifying victories on Sunday.
Russia destroyed Italy 10-1 behind the Lightning’s Vladislav Namestnikov‘s two goals and two assists. Bolts sniper Nikita Kucherov had a goal and three helpers while goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 14 shots.
“Overall, I don’t think this result will make anyone complacent,” Namestnikov said. “The key thing is that we’ve won two games, now we need to get ready for Germany. We know they’re a decent team. We saw them beat the USA, so we have to be fully prepared.”
Team Canada clobbered Slovenia 7-2 as Tampa Bay forward Brayden Point scored his first goal of the tournament.
On Monday Russia beat Germany 6-3 and Canada shutout Belarus 6-0. Sweden beat
Nikita Kucherov had two goals and Nikita Gusev had a goal and an assist in the Russian victory over Germany. Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made 26 saves.
In the Team Canada whitewashing of Belarus, Tampa Bay Lightning rookie Brayden Point – who was named Canada’s player of the game – added a pair of goals.
Team USA found a way to beat Sweden 4-3 on Monday. Sweden is probably wondering what more it had to do to win this game. The They led three times without finishing off the Americans. Going into the final period locked at 3-3, the Swedes produced a blistering passage of play, aided by two US penalties, but failed to put the puck in the net. So disciplined was Rikard Gronborg’s team that it went 55 minutes without even taking a penalty – only to pay three visits to the box in the dying minutes when panic took hold.
Anton Stralman had an assist and Victor Hedman scored his first goal.
“I think we played well enough to win this game. We definitely had our chances,” said Sweden’s Anton Stralman after the game. “Unfortunately we lost our coverage a couple of time in the first period and allowed them to score goals. We weren’t always cautious with the puck in dangerous areas.”
Russia is in first place in Group A, Canada tops Group B, while Sweden drops to fourth in Group A.
Lightning Players Totals
POINT Brayden
| Position: | Forward |
| Shoots/Catches | Right |
| Height (cm): | 180 |
| Height (ft in): | 5’11” |
| Weight (kg): | 75 |
| Weight (lbs): | 165 |
| Date of Birth: | 13 Mar 1996 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
| GP | G | A | PTS | PIM | +/- | GWG | PPG | SHG | SOG | %SG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 27.27 |
KILLORN Alex
| Position: | Forward |
| Shoots/Catches | Left |
| Height (cm): | 188 |
| Height (ft in): | 6’2” |
| Weight (kg): | 88 |
| Weight (lbs): | 194 |
| Date of Birth: | 14 Sep 1989 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
VASILEVSKIY Andrei
| Position: | Goalie |
| Shoots/Catches | Left |
| Height (cm): | 190 |
| Height (ft in): | 6’3” |
| Weight (kg): | 90 |
| Weight (lbs): | 198 |
| Date of Birth: | 25 Jul 1994 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
KUCHEROV Nikita
| Position: | Forward |
| Shoots/Catches | Left |
| Height (cm): | 180 |
| Height (ft in): | 5’11” |
| Weight (kg): | 77 |
| Weight (lbs): | 170 |
| Date of Birth: | 17 Jun 1993 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
NAMESTNIKOV Vladislav
| Position: | Forward |
| Shoots/Catches | Left |
| Height (cm): | 180 |
| Height (ft in): | 5’11” |
| Weight (kg): | 82 |
| Weight (lbs): | 181 |
| Date of Birth: | 22 Nov 1992 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
GUSEV Nikita
| Position: | Forward |
| Shoots/Catches | Right |
| Height (cm): | 178 |
| Height (ft in): | 5’10” |
| Weight (kg): | 76 |
| Weight (lbs): | 168 |
| Date of Birth: | 8 Jul 1992 |
| Club: | SKA St. Petersburg |
STRALMAN Anton
| Position: | Defenseman |
| Shoots/Catches | Right |
| Height (cm): | 180 |
| Height (ft in): | 5’11” |
| Weight (kg): | 86 |
| Weight (lbs): | 190 |
| Date of Birth: | 1 Aug 1986 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
HEDMAN Victor
| Position: | Defenseman |
| Shoots/Catches | Left |
| Height (cm): | 198 |
| Height (ft in): | 6’6” |
| Weight (kg): | 101 |
| Weight (lbs): | 223 |
| Date of Birth: | 18 Dec 1990 |
| Club: | Tampa Bay Lightning |
Russia plays Denmark, Canada plays France and Sweden plays Latvia on Thursday.
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