Relief flooded the United States locker room Saturday after its 2-1 victory over Switzerland in the Americans\u2019 second game of the World Junior Hockey Championships. Not only had the hosts withstood a tenacious, defensive-minded foe to improve to 2-0 in the tournament, there was good news on the injury front.<\/p>\n
With nine minutes remaining in the second period, American defenseman Cole Hutson was stretchered off the Grand Casino Arena ice after being hit up high on the left side with a Swiss shot from the point.<\/p>\n
The 19-year old Boston University student dropped between the circles in his own zone and didn\u2019t initially move as medical personnel rushed to him. The stretcher was wheeled onto the ice less than a minute after play ceased.<\/p>\n
Hutson, a force at even strength and on the power play and penalty kill, moved his legs before being strapped to a back board. He received applause from an announced crowd of 14,306.<\/p>\n
American coach Bob Motzko announced postgame that Hutson had showered upon his return from the hospital. Motzko said he didn\u2019t have more information other than specifying that Hutson wasn\u2019t hit in the head, as it appeared on video replays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a scary situation, but we have a close group of guys and they responded,\u201d said Motzko, whose team received second-period goals from Brodie Ziemer and Will Zellers and eight saves from Nicholas Kempf. \u201cHe\u2019s back with us, and we\u2019ll know more in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Zellers: \u201cCole\u2019s our best player, hands down. He takes over games. And seeing him go down like that, we knew we had to play for him. You have to push it to the side and be a pro. We had an intense hockey game to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Americans were snakebit during the first period, failing to score on a half dozen prime chances.<\/p>\n
Motzko pointed out that it was Switzerland the U.S. had to beat in the World Championship finals last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw on film that the Swiss had a great game plan, and we knew we were in for a tough game,\u201d the coach said. \u201cThey\u2019re aggressive and hard and the game turned into\u2026 one of those games you have to play to the end. We didn\u2019t blink, and I give our guys a ton of credit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. opened the scoring a minute into the second period after defenseman Chase Reid entered the zone on the right sideboards and fed a skating James Hagens in the center of the ice. Hagens charged down the slot and left a drop pass for Ziemer, who ripped the period\u2019s first shot past a lunging defender, over goaltender Christian Kirsch\u2019s blocker and under the crossbar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called for it and got a nice drop pass and wanted to really step into that one,\u201d Ziemer said. \u201cIt was nice to break through there\u2026 they box out really well around the net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Switzerland scored less than two minutes after Hutson\u2019s injury, Basile Sansonnens firing a shot from center point and over the glove of a screened Kempf. The backstop rebounded on the next shift, however, denying a Swiss breakaway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough on any team when you have one of your teammates go down,\u201d Hagens said. \u201cIt\u2019s a shock emotionally, but you have to make sure you wind things back in.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the deciding play, Zellers swung wide left around defender Gian Meier and wristed the puck from the bottom of the circle and in off Kirsch. It was the third goal of the tournament for Zellers, a University of North Dakota student and a late addition to the pool from which American players were recently selected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw him go down a little early, and I had a little bit of a window,\u201d Zellers said. \u201cI ripped it (near) his ear because no one likes to get into the head. I thought I\u2019d fire it there and see what happened. Then I kind of blacked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirsch, 6-feet-4, plays for Kitchener in the Ontario Hockey League and was outstanding under consistent pressure while making 12 saves.<\/p>\n
The Swiss produced several close calls in the U.S. end as the third period wound down. They were outshot, 18-13, during the game, which ended with the teams on their respective blue lines for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner and a handshake line.<\/p>\n
The U.S. next plays Monday when it faces Slovakia at 5 p.m. at Grand Casino Arena. A Tuesday meeting against formidable Sweden concludes group play for the Americans.<\/p>\n
The tournament format includes four games of pool play for each team with the top four in each pool advancing to single-elimination quarterfinals, followed by the semifinals and final.<\/p>\n
Briefly<\/p>\n
Ziemer was announced as the game\u2019s best American player\u2026 The U.S. is 26-0-2 against the Swiss at the WJC. \u2026 Empty seats liberally dotted the arena\u2019s lower bowl and a generous guess at actual attendance might have been 10,000. \u2026 Members of St. Paul\u2019s first-year consolidated boys high school hockey team served as shovel-wielding ice cleaners during time outs in the action. \u2026 Scratched for the U.S. after playing in Game 1 against Germany were forward Shane Vansaghi, goaltender Brady Knowling and defenseman Dakoda Rheaunme-Mullen. The latter, who plays for the University of Michigan, is the son of former Canadian women\u2019s goaltender Manon Rheaume, who won a 1998 Olympic silver medal, played five seasons in men\u2019s pro leagues and appeared in two NHL exhibition games for the Tampa Bay Lightning. \u2026 U.S. forward Max Plante is the son of former Minnesota-Duluth star and Cloquet native Derek Plante, who played 450 NHL games as well as having pro stints in Germany, Switzerland and Japan. He\u2019s now a Chicago Blackhawks assistant. \u2026 Hockey Canada apologized to Friday\u2019s Czechia opponents after the Canadians\u2019 Group B victory. Canada\u2019s players skated off the ice without shaking hands following a testy contest. \u2026 The Canadians, by virtue of their fifth-place finish at last year\u2019s WJC, have been assigned a locker room in Ridder Arena, home of the Gophers\u2019 women\u2019s team. Players and coaches must trek out of adjacent 3M Arena at Mariucci, where Group B games are held, through a tunnel connecting the facilities and across the Ridder ice. \u2026 Saturday night\u2019s referees were Czech and Canadian and the linesmen Canadian and Finnish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relief flooded the United States locker room Saturday after its 2-1 victory over Switzerland in the Americans\u2019 second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,6755,3,99,21,19,22,20,25,24,182812],"class_list":["post-373621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-hockey","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-juniors-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}