Team USA Maccabiah Games Round Robin Recap

by Benet Pols

Colby's Ben Chwick (courtesy of Colby SID)

On to the medal round. With round robin play completed at the Maccabiah Games, Team USA featuring NESCAC’s Ben Chwick (Colby ’14) and Max Greenwald (Middlebury ’16) is seeded second.

After going 2-1 in the round robin the team faces a rematch today, July 24th, with third seeded Ukraine (1-2), in the semi-final. The other semi-final features Canada (3-0) and Israel (0-3). The final and consolation will be played on July 26th.

Canada can expect to reach the finals as Israel has come up on the short-end of some big scores. The hosts lost 14-0 to the US, 15-0 to Canada and 14-3 to Ukraine.

The Canadian roster, like the US roster, features a number of players with NCAA experience.

Team USA’s semi-final should be more difficult. While the US side beat Ukraine in their first meeting, 5-3, it was the only tight game in the Maccabiah Games so far. Both Team USA and Ukraine were easily beaten by Canada: the US suffered a 6-1 setback while Ukraine lost 7-1. However, Canada’s goaltender, Cody Rosen, was called upon to make 43 saves against the United States; according to the Team Canada website, he performed especially well in a penalty filled second period that saw the Canadians short-handed frequently.

Round robin play featured a US win over the host nation Israel. In spite of the Israeli press’s game prediction that “Israel may have the advantage of being an established unit of players who know each other well and are internationally experienced,” the US team built a quick 7-0 first period lead and then coasted to a 14-0 win. Middlebury’s Greenwald notched a second period goal with a shot that found the top-shelf. Greenwald moved into the high slot from the left point and took a pass from a teammate moving out of the right corner across the face-off circle.

Israel does many things well but up-to-the-minute scorekeeping seems to be a challenge. Much of the detail of these games is picked up from players’ and coaches’ emails and tweets. Josh Richelew, the University of Michigan Director of Hockey Operations and Maccabiah Team USA manager, created a YouTube channel that provides some highlights as well. Below is the embed for Greenwald's goal from the channel. However, no information on assists, penalties or goaltender performance is available from the Maccabiah sites.

The second game featured a much better matched opponent in Ukraine.  Team USA went ahead 2-1 on Chwick’s first goal of the tournament and the red, white and blue held on for a 5-3 win.

Ukraine’s roster included two-time NHL All-star Alexei Zhitnik, a man who played more NHL games on the blue-line than any other player born in one of the nations of the former Soviet Union. In addition to his 1085 NHL games the forty year old picked up an Olympic goal medal playing for the “Unified Team” in 1992 and a silver playing for Russia in 1998. Anticipating facing off against Zhitnik, Max Greewald, tongue-in-cheek, noted that he didn’t “know whether to be excited or scared.”

The United States takes on Ukraine at 2 PM EDT ( 9 PM in Israel) after Canada faces off against Israel at 11 AM EDT (6 PM Israel). Limited live stats for the games can be found here at the Maccabiah website.