{"id":26950,"date":"2004-12-25T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2004-12-25T16:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2004\/12\/25\/team-usa-wins-crucial-opener-with-russia\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:56:05","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:56:05","slug":"team-usa-wins-crucial-opener-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2004\/12\/25\/team-usa-wins-crucial-opener-with-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA Wins Crucial Opener With Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Fritsche scored twice including the game winner and the U.S. never trailed as the National Junior team defeated Russia 5-4 in the opening game of the IIHF World Junior Championship at Ralph Engelstad Arena.<\/p>\n<p>It was a crucial win for the Americans, facing a team considered among the gold-medal favorites in the tournament&#8217;s opening game.<\/p>\n<p>Team USA got off to a quick start, scoring two times in the first six minutes of an opening period that would see six total goals. North Dakota forward Drew Stafford opened the scoring, delighting a hometown crowd of over 9,000 with a one-timer over the glove of Russian goalie Anton Khudobin. Chris Bourque increased the U.S. lead to two, knocking in his own rebound just 1:20 later.<\/p>\n<p>The Russians scored twice, including on a penalty shot to tie the game. But Team USA responded just 18 seconds later on a goal from Fritsche. That lead, however, was short-lived, as Alexander Ovechkin, the top overall pick in last June&#8217;s NHL Draft, tied it again at 3-3 just 22 seconds after that.<\/p>\n<p>Early in the second period, Robbie Schremp gave the U.S. a one-goal lead, scoring on the power play. Russia&#8217;s Dmitri Pestunov made it 4-4 before Fritsche scored shorthanded to put the U.S. up for good. That goal, at 8:40 of the second period, was the last score of the night.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan goalie Al Montoya, who helped lead Team USA to its first-ever gold medal in last year&#8217;s World Junior Championship, overcame a shaky start to get the win in goal.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the day, Team Canada defeated Slovakia, 7-3, while the Czech Republic earned a 7-2 decision against Belarus and Finland beat Germany 4-1.<\/p>\n<p>Team USA returns to action against Switzerland on Monday, Dec. 27, at 7:35 p.m. The game will be broadcast live on ESPN2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Fritsche scored twice including the game winner and the U.S. never trailed as the National Junior team defeated Russia 5-4 in the opening game of the IIHF World Junior Championship at Ralph Engelstad Arena. It was a crucial win for the Americans, facing a team considered among the gold-medal favorites in the tournament&#8217;s opening [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Team USA Wins Crucial Opener With Russia - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dan Fritsche scored twice including the game winner and the U.S. never trailed as the National Junior team defeated Russia 5-4 in the opening game of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26950\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Team USA Wins Crucial Opener With Russia - 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