Anze Kopitar is getting much deserved attention at the World Championships because, let's face it, to the North American audience, he's the only player on Team Slovenia who is close to being a household name.


On Friday, May 2nd he faced Team Canada with their juggernaut roster including the likes of Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis, and Jason Spezza. The last time Slovenia played Canada was in 2002 where Kopi was 17 and wearing a full face cage. Canada lit up the Slovenians 8 times and that was all she wrote. For this game in 2008, he told the press:

"If we can keep it down to maybe five goals that would be good," he said, adding it was still going to be a blast for his tiny nation of unknowns to play Canada. "We've got nothing to lose. We're just going to go out and have fun."

True to form the Slovenians were able to hold the Canadians to only 5 goals, which were scored by Dan Hamhuis, Martin St. Louis, with a hat trick by Dany Heatley. The lone Slovenian goal was scored by Kopi, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. Team Canada coach Ken Hitchcock lets people know:

"He's an awfully good player. A lot of people talk about a lot of young players in the game, but he's the real deal. He's the perfect mix of finesse and strength. He has great feet and great hands. And he has size and poise to go with it."

TSN is awesome and streams their international games online, so I was able to watch it in the comfort of my home. In this game Kopi makes a huge offensive push (by himself) in the 1st period into the Canadian zone. But the thing that annoyed me was that Pierre McGuire was talking about Canada while they were showing the replay of Kopi displaying his sweet moves! His goal came on a 5-on-3 advantage where he was positioned on the goal line to the right of Cam Ward. He stopped a pass with his foot, got it on his stick, and put it top shelf on Ward. To be honest, he actually looked a little bored on that play. In the 2nd period, leading up to Heatley's second goal, Kopi played almost the entire shift without his stick since it was knocked out of his hands. He did a good job getting his body in the way of the Canadians, but the Canadians bombed as many shots on the net as possible and Heatley's goal ended up being one that weaseled its way in off the short side. He ends with 1 goal, 3 shots on net, and 23:27 of ice time.

Cute note: Kopi said that he made the Slovenian team because his dad was on the coaching staff.

Canada's Cam Ward faced 23 shots while Slovenian netminder Robert Kristan faced 65. Impressive both on Canada for firing that many shots and even more so for Kristian for turning away 60 of them!