2010 0926 Elite Cup

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This weekend we had some more very tough days of hockey. On Thursday night we had our first game of the Djurgarden Elite Cup. We played the host team which was not the best team, but we knew that they would not be easy. After a terrible start we scored seven goals in a row to win 7-2. We got to miss school on Friday because of the tournament. We would play a team from Helsinki, Finland and another team from Sweden. The Helsinki team was small and short on players but they were still very good. After trading goals for most of the game, we ended up tying 5-5. We had to come up with a win to stay in the running for first place in the next game and did that. We scored four goals right away and eventually won 4-2. We then faced a team from Norway that was not very good and won 9-3. Going into our last game of the round robin, we were tied for first and were playing a different Helsinki team. They were a little better and despite outshooting them 40-15 we finished with a 1-1 tie. With some help, we finished in first place which meant we had to go right back onto the ice and play aginst yet another team from Helsinki. We were a little bit tired, but scored late in the game to win 2-1. This put us in the semifinals going into Sunday making us play a fourth team from Helsinki, Finland. When our team got to the rink, we found out that half of the other team had ate bad food and were sick. Our coach had the choice of making them forfeit and going to the finals which did not look as fun as playing the game with the team from Helsinki adding some of the players from the other Helsinki team. He chose to play the game which looked like the right decision when we got out to a great start with a 2-0 lead at halftime. However, in the second half the referees called 53 penalty minutes on us, most of which we did not deserve. The first five minutes of the second half took over thirty minutes to play. Because of that, we completely lost our momentum and a lot of our players to the penaty box. Helsinki went on to score powerplay goals and win 3-2. This was extremely frustrating because the referees took the game out of our hands. We never had a chance to really come back. Our assistant coach was ejected from the game because our coaches asked for an explanation for the penalties and they would not give them one. This put us in the consolation game which was televised. We played the other #1 seed that was also upset. This team is from Stockholm too, and is very talented. We traded goals throughout the game, but still found ourselves down by a goal late in the third period. We scored two goals, but they were both called off! This was very frustrating after what happened this morning. We went on to lose and finish in fourth place out of twelve teams. The talent was very high in this tournament and will be even higher next weekend when we have a tournament in western Sweden. After the semifinal I wish we would have made the decision to play straight to the finals, but in the long run, it was better that we played. Today, I learned that the referees are not always good and somehow we have to find a way to win.