Men’s hockey: Canada to play Grabner and Austrians tonight
Team Canada will play Austria today at the Bolshoy Ice Dome, the second game for both teams at the Olympic tournament.
Canada beat Norway 3-1 yesterday evening, with Austria dropping their opener 8-4 to Finland.
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The Austrians are here by way of an Olympic qualification tournament last February in which they beat out Germany. It is their first Games since Salt Lake 2002.
The team is mostly players in the Austrian or Swiss leagues, but the Eagles did add three NHL’ers with Flyers’ forward Michael Raffl plus Islanders Thomas Vanek and Michael Grabner.
Coach Emanuel Viveiros spread out the ice-time in the loss to Finland, and the North American pros each played around 16 minutes. Grabner made the best of it with a hat-trick on four shots.
The Canadians will have another opportunity to get comfortable with each other against one of the less threatening teams in their pool. Mikael Granlund and Finland is on Sunday.
Canada had a light skate this morning, with only a few players taking part, most notably those who were healthy scratches last night.
Roberto Luongo will get the start in goal for Canada tonight.
