Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Team USA defeats Ukraine, advances to finals against Canada in Maccabiah Games

Team USA, which includes Colby's Ben Chwick ('14) and Middlebury's Max Greenwald ('16), defeated the Ukraine 6-0 today to advance to the 2013 Maccabiah Games men's hockey finals against Canada, who dismantled Israel 13-2 in the other semifinals.

The Maccabiah website, true to its shaky performance throughout the tournament, provides next to no details for the game, even erroneously posting the wrong score; the 5-3 listed tally represents the round robin match between the USA/Ukraine, the smallest goal differential of any of the eight games in the  tournament so far.

What we do know of the game comes mostly from Facebook and twitter thanks to Josh Richelew, the USA team manager. After a scoreless first period, the USA jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second period. The floodgates opened in the third and the US squad ended up with six goals, three of them on the power play.

Greenwald had an assist somewhere in there while Chwick did not figure in the scoring sextet. According to Chwick, "All in our best effort of the tournament. We used our speed extremely well." (h/t Benet Pols)

The US now faces off against a Canada team that beat the red, white and blue 6-1 in the final game of round robin play yesterday. Despite the lopsided score, the US did pepper the Canadian goaltender with 44 shots. The gold medal game will take place on Friday afternoon in Israel. 

In lieu of details of the semis, here are some fun tweets.  The first comes to us form Stan Fischler, Emmy award winning broadcaster for the MSG Network (Rangers, Islanders, Devils). He tweeted out the finals matchup before either semifinal game was played. If Israel and Ukraine used it as bulletin board material, it didn't work.
The next comes to us from Ben Rosen, USA team member, former Boston University Terrier and current property of the New York Islanders organization. Rosen discovered that the Canada Centre had a shooting range and decided to blow off some steam pre-game.

Who's that tweeting at USA coach Billy Jaffe in the tweet below? None other than Mike Eruzione, captain of the famous 1980 USA "Miracle on Ice" Team.


Enjoy the rest of the tweets below and don't forget to vote for who you think will win the gold medal matchup between the Canucks and Yanks. (poll is on upper right hand corner sidebar)





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