2017 IIHF Men’s World Championship Recap Day Four: Ups & Downs

Arizona Coyotes fans, we have some good news and bad news coming out of the IIHF Men’s World Championships today. Let’s rip the band-aid off and get the bad news out of the way.

GER vs RUS

In the first match featuring a Coyote, it was Tobias Rieder and Germany facing off against team Russia. It looked like Rieder was off to a great start in the first period as he recorded 2 shots in only 5:24 ice time...until he was hit. The hit would take Rieder out of the game as he left the ice to be looked at.

At the start of the second period, it seemed all was well as Rieder re-joined his team. But here’s the bad news, folks: he would play only 0:54 seconds in the second period before being hit again.

Many of you who regularly watch Worlds in the summer might be having flashbacks to last year. For those of you who don’t remember or know what this is referring to:

Last year at Worlds, Rieder only played 4 games for team Germany tallying 2 points (1 goal and 1 assist) before he was removed from the tournament due to injury. In a game against team Canada, Rieder accidentally collided mid-ice with Canada captain Corey Perry. The collision resulted in an injury to the interior ligament in his left knee.

His previous injury took roughly 4-6 weeks to recover from. For now, it looks like the same might be the case this summer. FFH will provide updates when there is more information on the matter.

USA vs SWE

The game between team USA and team Sweden was the last game between Coyotes players, unless there is a match-up in the finals. The last time team USA faced team Sweden in the IIHF MWC was 2011 in Slovakia and team Sweden won 6-2. Until today, the last time team USA had won against Sweden was in 2005.

To start the game there was a slight line change for captain Connor Murphy as he was paired with Noah Hanifin (Carolina Hurricanes) instead of Danny DeKeyser (Detroit Red Wings). The line of Clayton Keller, Christian Dvorak, and Nick Bjugstad (Florida Panthers) stayed the same but had a new defensive pairing in Charlie McAvoy (Boston Bruins) and Trevor van Riemsdyk (Chicago Blackhawks).

It didn’t take long for Keller to score his fourth goal of the tournament to tie it up 1-1 3:21 into the first.

10 minutes and 2 seconds later there would be another point for a Coyote as Oliver Ekman-Larsson would have the primary assist on Elias Lindholm’s (Carolina Hurricanes) second goal of the game to make it 2-1 Sweden.

The two teams would trade goals three more times before, finally, J.T. Compher (Colorado Avalanche) would redirect a blast from the blue line from Murphy to seal the 4-3 win for team USA.

Later, Murphy would take a shot straight off the knee but was okay in the end.

This was a much needed 3 point win for team USA and it is only the 11th win out of a total 53 meetings between the two teams.

Ekman-Larson finished the game with 1 assist, 1 SOG, and 20:24 TOI.

Dvorak finished with 0 SOG, and 13:33 TOI.

Keller finished with 1 goal, 2 SOG, and 11:19 TOI.

Murphy finished with 1 assist, 4 SOG, and 24:45 TOI. That is the most TOI on team USA and more than anyone on team Sweden.

Point totals so far are as follows:

Rieder - 1

Ekman-Larsson - 2

Dvorak - 0

Keller - 4

Murphy - 2

You can watch team USA’s rematch against team Italy at 7:15 AM MST, and team Germany take on Slovakia at 11:15 AM MST on Wednesday. Sweden also takes on Latvia at 11:15 AM MST on Thursday.

Details on the full schedule, times, and how to watch can be found in our IIHF Coyotes Primer here.