But is this surprising? Of course not. On Sunday, May 4th, Team Canada played keep away with the Latvians while scoring 7 goals in the process. Pascal LeClaire held off the Latvians to zero goals. The thing that bugged me the most was that Gord Miller kept referring to Raitis Ivanans as "E-van-ness." Incorrect, my friend!


This game against Canada is obviously not the game the Latvians are looking to win. Their main concern is the against the Sloveians. A.K.A. Raitis Ivanans against Anze Kopitar! Whichever team losses that match up gets sent to the relegation group, which is NOT what you want to end up in this tournament.

Some points in the 2nd period:

The Latvians are wearing their throwback jerseys. Each team will wear their throwbacks once during this tournament. The Latvia jerseys had no names on their backs or numbers on their arms.

Pierre McGuire mentioned that Canada's top line of Dany Heatley, Ryan Getzlaf, and Rick Nash was basically going to be unstoppable this tournament. Seriously, it's honestly not even fair. But hey, if your country can field that kind of team, more power to you.

They were talking about Dustin Brown and Kopi playing against each other (USA vs. Slovenia) and they said that Brownie was warning Kopi to keep his head up. And Gord called him Mr. Brown, which really is too funny to me.

In the 3rd period:

Ivanans makes himself heard by getting a 5-minute spearing penalty along with a game misconduct equaling 20 minutes. He ends the spirited evening at a -4 while getting 8:08 of ice time. Is it bad that his stats make me smile? It's so hard to not like Raitis!


The US played Slovenia where all three players had a showing. The score was USA 5, Slovenia 1. As you can surmise, Kopi had the only Slovenian goal. He finished the game with 1 goal, 3 shots on net, was at a +1, and had 19:03 of time on the ice. Patrick O'Sullivan ends with 1 assist, 1 shot on net, was even in plus/minus, and got 12:09 of ice time. Brownie's stats were the exact same except that he had 14:12 of ice time. This is one game I wished I could have watched.

Special mention goes to Phil Kessel because he scored a hat trick in the game and to Slovenia's goaltender Robert Kristan for facing 37 shots while Tim Thomas faced just 12.