The following is a guest post from Greg Thompson, member of Team USA competing at the 2013 IIHF Inline World Championships. Greg has been involved with either the IIHF or FIRS World Championships since 2005. Prior to that, he was helping Lindenwood University win four consecutive national championships from 2004-2007. Below is his first hand experience of playing in the 2013 IIHF Inline World Championships.
Game 3 against Slovakia was everything that we thought it was going to be. We knew it was going to be a slower pace and a more patient game. Slovakia sat back into a trap and didn’t really give us too many quality scoring chances. We had to pick our spots and be patient because they were just waiting for us to make mistakes so they could go off the other way on an odd man rush. We limited the mistakes and the Slovaks didn’t have too many scoring changes.
Dakota Eveland (CA) scored his first World Championships goal to get the USA on the board. Matt White (CA) followed shortly with a PP goal that just slipped in past the goaltender. The Slovakian goaltender played an outstanding game and didn’t allow us to bury and easy ones. He was definitely on top of his game.
The game was 3-1 until Junior Cadiz (CA) found a loose puck and banged home a five hole shot. With patience and discipline we played a puck control game and didn’t allow anymore odd man rushes. Jerry Kuhn (MI) had a great game in net and and stopped loads of point blank power play chances.
Thanks for the updates, but what inquiring minds really want to know is what kind of swag are the Players of the Game getting? Of the games I’ve watched, the winners got backpacks. Is that all they’re getting?