“Do not follow the creative approach and mastery.” What was remembered by the hockey team of Ukraine at the Universiade-2023

From January 12 to 22, Lake Placid, New York, USA hosted the World Winter Universiade 2023, where the Ukrainian national hockey team took part for the seventh time, taking the final sixth place. Analyzing the performance of the blue-yellows, we pay attention to several details.

A total of 12 teams participated, which were divided into 2 groups. Group A included student teams from Canada, Japan, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Latvia and Sweden. Group B consisted of teams from the USA, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Hungary, South Korea and the UK.

The Ukrainian team was able to finish sixth, ahead of students from Britain, Sweden, Latvia, Korea, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Recall that the Ukrainians in 1999 became the champions of the hockey tournament at the Universiade, after which the participation of the team in such tournaments became a rarity.

Now our students took 7 points in five matches and were able to impose a decent fight even on the champions, despite the fact that “almost all of our players are highly specialized – they lack creativity and skill,” as the head coach of the national team Vadim Shakhraichuk said. The coach also paid special attention to captain Vadim Mazur and striker Gleb Krivoshapkin, who became the top scorer of the blue-and-yellows – 8 (5+3) points.

Expected championship of Canada. Maple Leaves throughout the tournament demonstrated complete coordination, ultra-high speeds and the ability to score from almost anywhere on the site. Interestingly, six days before the start of the Universiade, Canadian U-20 hockey players received a World Youth Championship medal. To collect all the world titles, Canada has only the World Championship among national teams, which will be held from May 12 to May 28, 2023 in the cities of Tampere (Finland) and Riga (Latvia).

The first position in the second group and, accordingly, the silver medals were won by the US team, which at the already mentioned youth World Cup could not rise above third place. The Americans fought their battle in the semi-final for all 60 minutes of playing time and continued it in overtime. The extremely inconvenient, disciplined and fast Japanese team tried to attack and save their goal to the end, but missed after the regular time, which guaranteed the students from the USA to reach the final and receive medals (4:3 OT).

The match for third place also ended with a rather interesting result. Japan, as we wrote earlier, is a fast and disciplined team, but these qualities were not enough in the fight against Kazakhstan. The Kazakhs beat their rivals by seven goals, which literally left no chance for the Japanese to compete for bronze (8:1). As for the students from Kazakhstan, we can confidently say that they owe their victory not least to the goalkeeper, since the Japanese outplayed their opponents in shots on goal: 34 – 30. In addition to the goalkeeper, the star of the match can definitely be called the one who scored 6 (2+4) points of Kazakhstan forward Maxim Mukhametov. And it was Mukhametov who subsequently received the title of the best scorer of the Universiade-2023 in the goal + pass system – 15 (6 + 9) points.

If among the leaders the positions were quite obvious, then the bottom of the standings surprised. Let’s start with the last place – Great Britain. Actually, their position is not shocking, because after the last World Cup, the British dropped from the elite division to 1A. At the Universiade, they did not win a single game, they conceded a total of 63 goals with 8 goals scored. In addition, students from Britain also hold anti-records for the number of goals conceded: Kazakhstan – Great Britain (15:1), Great Britain – USA (0:18) .

On 11th and 10th place we see two so-called “hockey” countries – Sweden and Latvia. Both were in a group with Ukraine. First our team met with Latvia, which lost in overtime with a score of 2:3. It would seem that the Latvian students should have become one of the strongest teams, because half of the club is the leader of the country’s championship Mogo, and the other is from the second Zemgale team, which performs on two fronts: in the domestic championship and the second division of Finland. But it was in decisive matches for themselves that the Latvians more often conceded with rather large scores.

Interestingly, the team twice transferred the game to overtime (once in a shootout) and won twice. And, perhaps, the most unexpected 10th place for the Swedish team. The matches of the Scandinavians were often frankly disastrous: what to say about the fights against the leaders, even if they conceded 12 goals (12:2) in the game with Ukraine.

Therefore, we are now waiting for the World Cup among national teams, where we will see if Canada can defend the third title in 2023, how the teams of Latvia and Sweden will return positions. And the most interesting thing for Ukrainian fans: will our team be able to defeat the Japanese, who were first defeated by the youth team, and then by the student team?

Lilia Brezgunova