Sudbury Wolves win the 2012 World Junior Club Cup

The final between Sudbury Wolves and Waterloo Black Hawks was scoreless after two periods. In the middle of the third Sudbury scored both goals of the game within 34 seconds. First, with a nice move, Joshua Leivo beat the American goalie Eamon McAdam at 47:56 and then at 48:30 Frankie Corrado scored a power play goal from the point. Joel Vienneau in Sudbury’s net made 29 saves to earn the shutout and the tournament was won by the Canadians.

The World Junior Club Cup was first played 2011 with the MHL team of CSKA Moscow as winner. For 2012 the tournament increased from 8 to 10 participating teams.

In Group A played Dinamo-Shinnik Bobruisk (Belarus), Waterloo Black Hawks (USA), Omsk Hawks (Russia), Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) and the U20 National team of Norway.

The B group consisted of Linköping (Sweden), Sudbury Wolves (Canada), HIFK (Finland), HK Riga (Latvia) and the U20 National team of Denmark.

Group A was surprisingly won by the Belarusian team Dinamo-Shinnik Bobruisk. A key game to the success was the 2-1 win against the home team Omsk Hawks on the opening day. Dinamo-Shinnik Bobruisk also beat Waterloo and Norway in the group stage and could in spite of a loss to Karlovy Vary win the group. Waterloo Black Hawks won all games except the one against the Belarusians to finish second of the five teams in the group and qualify for the semi finals. The home team Omsk Hawks only got a disappointing third place in the group.

Group A

In Group B Linköping of the Swedish junior league J20 SuperElit won all four games to become the only team of the group stage with a perfect record. The Canadian participant Sudbury Wolves lost 6-3 to Linköping and also lost in a shootout game to HK Riga but got the second place in the group one point ahead of the Finnish team HIFK.

Group B

The Norwegian and Danish U20 national teams both ended the tournament with four losses.

The first semi final was played between Linköping and Waterloo. It was a game that completely changed character a couple of times. After two periods Waterloo had a 3-0 lead with goals by Jake Horton, Justin Kloos and Kyle Schmidt, and had outshot Linköping 29-10 but the Swedes had an incredible comeback in the third period. At just 14 seconds Joakim Broberg got Linköping on the sheet. Mathias Karlsson scored 2-3 and Jesper Pettersson tied it. At 50:16 Linköping took the lead on a goal by Joakim Erdugan. Would it last? No, the Americans never gave up and Vince Hinostroza tied the game with just one second (!) remaining. After a scoreless 10-minute overtime the game was decided in a shootout. Linköping had the lead twice, but the Americans won the ticket to the final thanks to a deciding goal by Hinostroza.

In the second semi final Sudbury Wolves had an easier way to the final. With two goals and an assist by Michael Kantor the club of OHL won 5-2 against Dinamo-Shinnik Bobruisk. Justin Sefton scored 1-0 for the Canadians at 4 minutes but Boris Novikov tied it at 5:30. Kantor scored his goals in the 11th and 18th minutes to take Sudbury to a 3-1 lead after the first period. Sudbury’s German player Dominik Kahun scored his only goal of the tournament to make it 4-1 in the second period. With 14:25 remaining of the game Maxim Parfeyevets brought some hope to the Belarusians with hit 4-2 goal but the Wolves win was secured at 56:52 when the tournament’s top scorer Joshua Leivo scored an empty-netter.

Linköping won the bronze medal game against Dinamo-Shinnik Bobruisk and became the best European team of the tournament. The game was a scoreless tie at 60 minutes, but Jesper Bärgård only needed 1:19 of overtime to decide the game with a power-play goal. Jacob Johansson earned the shut-out with 19 saves.

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