Solid Effort Takes Canada Past Slovaks

Team Canada played their second game of the round robin portion of the World Cup tonight against Team Slovakia and skated to a commanding 5-1 victory while also correcting their major weakness from their previous game against Team USA. Team Canada managed to beat Team USA last night despite not playing with enough energy throughout the whole game. Tonight, however, Team Canada dominated the game for the entire sixty minutes, outplaying, outworking and out shooting Team Slovakia. Slovakia certainly saw a much different Team Canada tonight than they did in the exhibition round.

Kris Draper and Scott Hannan were inserted into the lineup for this game in place of Brendan Morrow and Ed Jovanovski, respectively. Morrow had not shown the coaching staff anything close to resembling solid play in the games he has been in and Jovanovski was injured in last night’s game against Team USA. His injury was more serious than first expected. After being diagnosed with a cracked rip and a sprained medial collateral ligament, Team Canada Executive Director, Wayne Gretzky, declared him out of action for the remainder of the tournament.

Ryan Smyth and Vincent Lecavalier were arguably Team Canada’s best players in tonight’s game. Smyth scored two goals and was robbed on a late chance in the third period which would have given him a hat trick had he scored. Lecavalier was dangerous all night creating chances with some spectacular one on one moves.

With their victory tonight, Team Canada is now assured of first place in their pool providing the Russians, who have yet to play a game, do not win all three of their games. Team Canada is off until Saturday when they will take on Team Russia in Toronto at Air Canada Centre.