Sutter Puts Team Canada Through Paces at BetLM

Sutter Puts Team Canada Through Paces

ZURICH – It’s not easy putting a Team Canada on ice for the first pre-tournament game en route to the world championships.

You have play­ers who have been off the ice for two weeks and play­ers who have been off the ice for two days.

And there are all sorts of inter­est­ing chal­lenges involv­ing travel – like here on Saturday.

Head coach Brent Sut­ter was putting his charges through the first full prac­tice prior to today’s game against Switzer­land in Fri­bourg – 130-kilometres away – when into the rink, car­ry­ing their Chicago Black­hawks equip­ment bags, strolled Patrick Sharp and Dun­can Keith.

“Two hours late for a coach Sut­ter prac­tice? I’d call that a vet­eran move,” laughed Sharp.

The two Hawks were delayed fly­ing out of Chicago, but they’ll suit up against the Swiss.

“They haven’t been off long; it’s prob­a­bly eas­ier for them than the guys who come from teams that missed the play­offs,” said Sutter.

Keith and Sharp took the ice together for their own pri­vate prac­tice after the team com­pleted their session.

“Once it took off, it was an easy flight … and I feel good,” reported Keith. “It hasn’t affected my breathing.”

Keith said he didn’t think twice about accept­ing the invitation.

“I was healthy. It’s excit­ing to come and play for the group they’ve put together this year,” he said.

Sut­ter watched them for a few min­utes and smiled.

“I’m really happy with our prac­tice,” he said.

“It looks like we really have our legs under us already. There was lots of energy and lots of life,” added the coach, who had Edmonton’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jor­dan Eberle on a line with Jamie Benn of the Dal­las Stars, and John Tavares of the N.Y. Islanders with Jeff Skin­ner of Car­olina and Andrew Ladd of Winnipeg.

The other lines are to be determined.

Sut­ter said he plans to start Oil­ers goalie Devan Dub­nyk against the Swiss and go with Carolina’s Cam Ward, the Sher­wood Park prod­uct, iTues­day in Kloten prior to open­ing the tour­na­ment against Slo­va­kia in Helsinki on Friday.

“It’s a lit­tle bit of a shock to the body,” Ward said of fac­ing a full bar­rage of shots Sat­ur­day after the team had mostly just skated at a short prac­tice the day before.

“But it’s excit­ing, too,” said the goalie who won the Conn Smythe Tro­phy as play­off MVP after lead­ing Car­olina to a Stan­ley Cup vic­tory over Edmon­ton in 2006.

Dub­nyk is expected to start Canada’s sec­ond game, against Team USA on Saturday.

“The game against the U.S. would be a fun game to play; I want to be ready for it,” said Dub­nyk, who’s been handed the backup role after being Canada’s No. 3 goalie at this tour­na­ment the past two years.

“I cer­tainly expect to get in a cou­ple of games. It doesn’t feel like that long ago I was on the ice with the Oilers.”

Dub­nyk, who prac­tised in Cal­gary with Eberle and Flames defence­man Jay Bouwmeester before fly­ing to Europe, has drawn Nugent-Hopkins as his room-mate.

“I’m try­ing to keep him in line. He’s such an ani­mal … and he’s talk­ing me ears off,” he joked of the quiet Calder Tro­phy final­ist, who just turned 19.

“I’m really excited to see him go to work on the big ice. I can only imag­ine what he can do with all that space to work with.”

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