The Russians should have known better than to poke the sleeping giant.
After skating to a 5-1 victory over Team WHL — their first in nine games against the Western Leaguers — a number of Russians decided to showboat on their way off the ice, taunting fans at the Cranbrook Rec Centre.
Defenceman Karl Alzner, who didn’t play in the first game but served as team captain the following night, said he and his teammates found all the motivation they would need from the Russians’ display.
“It was tough for me to get to sleep,” Alzner said. “Stuff like that really bugs me.”
After being beaten soundly by Canada in the fall Super Series, where Russia managed a measly tie in eight games, and winning two of their first five during the ADT Canada-Russia Challenge, Alzner wasn’t alone in wondering why the European club was celebrating.
“In the Super Series, they tied one game and lost the rest,” Alzner said. “They won a game against (the QMJHL), then lost the rest before finally winning one more game.
“You don’t see us doing that after every time we beat them, so it’s frustrating to see them do that.”
Team WHL came out fired up for the series finale and skated to a 4-1 victory in Medicine Hat.
Hometown hero Brennan Bosch got the party started before Ryan White (Calgary Hitmen), Bud Holloway (Seattle Thunderbirds) and Jordan Eberle (Regina Pats) erupted in the third period.
The victory gave the CHL a 4-2 victory in the series and set the tone for what should be an interesting world junior tournament later this month.
“Just knowing they acted the way they did after that first game against us, it sets the tone for Christmas time and we’re going to want to beat them that much more,” Alzner said.
To Russia’s credit, they finally sent a team to Canada that was worth playing against.
Past teams have been run out of the rink, especially in Western Canada, where Team WHL built up a perfect 8-0 record and outscored their sub-par competition 47-11 over the first four years of the Challenge.
And Alzner said the Russians are starting to figure how to play against Canadian clubs.
“They keep getting better and better,” said Alzner, who stars for the Calgary Hitmen.
“They’re playing a more similar style to us than they did at the beginning of the Super Series, when it was sort of run and gun.
“They’re playing a lot smarter and they’re locking down the zones a lot better.”
They even got into a couple of scraps in the Cranbrook game as Andrey Kolesnikov dropped the mitts with Kootenay Ice forward Andrew Bailey. Russia’s Marat Fakhrutdinov traded shots with Holloway at the end of the game, in which Kelowna Rockets d-man Luke Schenn provided all the offence for Team WHL.
Seattle T-Birds defenceman Thomas Hickey said the visitors’ aggression caught his team by surprise.
“I’m not sure if we knew it was going to be that intense out there,” Hickey told the Kootenay NewsAdvertiser.
“They were chippy and they didn’t back off of us all night.”
And that’s great news for Canadian hockey fans.
This nation’s dominance at recent world junior tournaments and again in the Super Series took some of the fun out of hockey’s oldest rivalry.
But thanks to some feistiness, much-improved play and some bone-headed showboating, the fire is back.
Can’t wait until the Christmas break.
Happy holidays and we’ll see you in late December with our World Junior Championship coverage.
And for now, enjoy our latest issue of Hockey Now.
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