I watched one period of the USA-Switzerland game and most of the USA-Slovakia game. The feeds weren't great and it was quite hard to draw any conclusions but it was better than nothing. I tried to devote all of my attention to the US team.
Nobody really wowed me from what I saw. Rob Czarnik had some nice plays in the Swiss game. He looks like he should have better numbers than he does. Danny Kristo was also noticable for me as he had a lot of jump when he was on the puck. Nick Pryor was noticable for his mobility. He made some real nice moves to shake forecheckers.
Justin Florek had a big third period against the Slovaks and pretty much won the tournament for the US. He scored two goals, including one with an empty US net and just over a minute remaining which put the US ahead of the Swiss in goals scored (the US needed to beat the Slovaks by four goals to win the tie breaker against the Swiss). He didn't seem like the kind of player that jumps out at you but he certainly came up in the clutch.
McRae didn't do much of anything which was dissapointing.
Seth Helgeson was very shaky in the US d-zone. He looked like he was in over his head.
It's just one game and a few players are up with the U18 team but this doesn't look like that talented of a US team, though they played solid team defense and didn't really allow too many chances.
The Slovaks didn't look good at all. The '89 birth year seems pretty barren for them.
I finally saw a (very) little bit of Luca
i too. He had one nice play in the US zone where he went around the net untouched and came out into the slot and got a shot on goal. He certainly had the look of a real player when he was carrying the puck but he didn't seem overly intense in the one period I saw of him. Maybe he just wasn't into this tournament (he only had one assist in three games).
Does anyone have a link to stats for the 5 Nations Cup going on in the Czech Republic right now?
Go to the bottom of the article below. The files are PDF.
http://www.hokej.cz/index.php?lng=CZ&webid=246&id=33528&view=clanek