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Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Monday, December 22, 2008

Battalion Are Represented Well

Although these games are meaningless in the bigger picture, the two boys from the Brampton Battalion are lighting up the world. Cody Hodgson has opened many eyes in the pre-competition games leading up to the World Junior tournament by scoring three points in both pre-comp games thus far. In Canada’s first practice game Friday night at the Air Canada Centre, Hodgson was everywhere the puck was. Skating hard and hitting even harder, Hodgson had numerous chances to inflate his stats but settled for a dominating three point night, finishing with one goal and two assists. Cody’s performance overshadowed all other offensive displays including a solid game by John Tavares.

In game two, last night at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Cody was back to work having another three point night on one goal and two assists. I cannot comment further on this game though since I was busy watching Cody’s teammate from the Battalion, Evgeny Grachev, lead the Russians to a 4-1 win over Kazakhstan at the General Motors Centre in Oshawa. Grachev earned the player of the game for Russia for his effort. I missed a couple goals as I was tending to my son so I cannot give point totals for this game but I do know that he had at least one goal and one assist in his impressive showing. One can only imagine how much Brampton wants these two players back in their line up but they will have to go without for another couple weeks.

Canada has one final pre-competition game on Tuesday night in Hamilton against Slovakia. The tournament is set to kick off boxing day as always with Latvia taking on Russia at 2:30 at the Ottawa Civic Centre and Germany facing off against the Americans at 3:30 at Scotia Bank Place. Canada takes to the SBP ice at 7:30 against the Czech Republic while Finland takes on Sweden at 6:30 at the Civic Centre.

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