2011 0108 Happy New Year!

Playoff Rink in Gothenberg

On the last day of the year Shane's family, my dad, my grandfather, and I travelled to Gothenberg, Sweden to play in the biggest hockey tournament in the world. There were 48 teams with most of them from Sweden. There were also the best teams from Norway, Finland, and Czech Republic. The train only took three hours to travel across Sweden because it went over 200kph or about 130mph. Once we got there we went to eat at a pretty fancy restaurant with some of my teammates. The food was very good but took four hours to eat as planned. That is the way the meal was supposed to go on New Year's Eve. Then we went back to the hotel to see the end of Sweden vs. Canada which Sweden eventually won in a shootout. Ten minutes before the New Year my teammates and I hurried outside to watch the fireworks in downtown Gothenberg. It was a crazy place to be and was dangerous but nobody got hurt in the end. It was fun to celebrate the beginning of 2011 in Gothenberg, Sweden's third largest city, I think. The next day we went skating outside for an hour or so before preparing for the tournament with the Opening Ceremonies. It was very fun to stay in the hotel that housed all 48 teams and their families. However, there were 23 floors with 40 rooms to a floor! The next day we would have our first three games! The first we won very closely 3-2 against a tough team from Finland. This would later prove to be the game that helped us win our group and advance to the playoffs. We won our next two games 3-1 and 5-0 against one of the host teams and a team from southern Stockholm. The next day we won our first out of four games against a team from northern Sweden 8-0 before winning another important game 1-0 against HV-71. This put us in great position to advance. However, we played poorly against a team from Norway and tied 3-3. This brought us to a crazy game against a team from Czech Republic. We dominated from the start and towards the end the game it became very dangerous. They were a very dirty team and by the time the game was over, they had four players out of the game, three in the penalty box, three left on the ice, and none on the bench! The referee had to call off the game in favor of us. This put us in Group 1 for the playoffs. We would play the other five teams who won their group: SDE, Arlanda Wings, Czech Republic, Helsinki, and Nacka. Four of the six teams including us were from the Stockholm area. First we beat SDE, our rival 1-0 in a very close game. Then we blew a 2-0 lead to tie Arlanda in another very close game. The next two games we won 1-0 and 7-4 in pretty close games. However, Arlanda was also winning and they had a bigger goal differential. We lost our last game and were eliminated from the tournament. Arlanda went on to win and we finished in second out of 48 teams. It was a pretty good finish and I am happy with second place even though first place would have been a lot better. I played pretty well in the beginning, more than the end. It was fun to play in such a big tournament and to win a lot of games. It was also fun for me, but not the others to watch USA top Sweden in the broze medal game at the World Juniors. Russia beat Canada suprisingly to win gold. Now it is back to Stockholm and the league games. School is back on Monday and my dad and Hilda who is a good friend and our nanny leave tomorrow. There are more practices now again too.