Minsk, Belarus (SportsNetwork.com) – The Americans cruised past Belarus to open the 2014 World Hockey Championship, while France stunned Canada.<\/p>\n
Jacob Trouba scored a pair of goals to lead the United States to a 6-1 victory over Belarus. Tim Thomas made 20 saves.<\/p>\n
Brock Nelson gave the USA a 1-0 lead with a power-play marker 12:22 into the first period. The Americans then took control with a three-goal second period.<\/p>\n
Andrei Stepanov scored the lone goal for Belarus, which got 19 saves from Andrei Mezin.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare scored the lone goal of the shootout and former NHL goaltender Cristobal Huet was brilliant throughout, as France pulled off a 3-2 victory over Canada.<\/p>\n
Stephane da Costa scored a pair of power-play goals for the French, who also came up with a stunner in last year’s World Championship with a 2-1 victory over Russia.<\/p>\n
Huet, a two-time All-Star who last played in the NHL as a backup with the 2010 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, finished with 34 saves. He turned aside Kyle Turris, Sean Monahan and Matt Read in the shootout.<\/p>\n
The French also came up empty on their first two attempts in the shootout, including a miss by da Costa, but Bellemare snapped a shot from slot over James Reimer’s blocker into the upper corner for the winner.<\/p>\n
Reimer stopped 26 shots through 65 minutes for Canada, which lost for just the second time in 10 all-time meetings with France at the World Championship. The Canadians won Olympic gold earlier this year in Sochi, but haven’t captured gold at the worlds since 2007.<\/p>\n
Brayden Schenn and Erik Gudbranson scored goals for Canada.<\/p>\n
Also Friday, Russia eased past Switzerland in its opener with a 5-0 rout. Sergei Bobrovsky made 27 saves in the shutout, while Alexander Ovechkin notched a goal and an assist.<\/p>\n
Ovechkin scored one of three first-period goals for the Russians, who are trying to better their disappointing fifth-place Olympic effort.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jakub Klepis scored 1:50 into overtime to give the Czech Republic a 3-2 win over Slovakia.<\/p>\n
Michel Miklik and Marek Viedensky lit the lamp for Slovakia. The other Czech goals came from veteran superstar Jaromir Jagr and Ondrej Nemec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minsk, Belarus (SportsNetwork.com) – The Americans cruised past Belarus to open the 2014 World Hockey Championship, while France stunned Canada. Jacob Trouba scored a pair of goals to lead the United States to a 6-1 victory over Belarus. Tim Thomas made 20 saves. Brock Nelson gave the USA a 1-0 lead with a power-play marker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18389,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369\/revisions\/18389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}