Saturday, January 5, 2013

Four Americans to All-Star Team

Press Release

U.S. goalie John Gibson received the triple honour of being named tournament MVP, Directorate Best Goalie, and goalie for the media all-star team. 
 
Gibson becomes the first goalie since Steve Mason (CAN) in 2008 to be named MVP.
Other players named to the Directorate include Jacob Trouba (USA) as Best Defenceman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (CAN) as Best Forward.

The media all-star team consists of Gibson in goal as well as defencemen Trouba and Jake McCabe (USA). The forwards are Nugent-Hopkins, Filip Forsberg (SWE), and John Gaudreau (USA).

Attendance for the U20 is expected to be about 112,000 making it the third most attended U20 in Europe. Helsinki/Hämeenlinna in 1998 has the European record with 139,680 (for 34 games, as opposed to Ufa, which hosted 31 games), and Helsinki/Hämeenlinna again in 2004 (31 games).

Next year’s U20 will take place in Malmö, Sweden with a new format. All eight teams will play in the quarter-finals; the 5th-place game will be eliminated; and, the bottom two teams in each group will play a best-of-three to determine which country gets demoted.

Latvia is the only country to be demoted this year while Norway moves up in 2014 from Division I.

 (Nathan can be reached at nathanfournier@mainehockeyjournal.com)

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