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USA vs Canada Weekend!

By staff, 01/06/16, 10:30AM CST

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3 Friendly Matches Slated for 1/9/2016

USA vs Canada Game Schedule

Date Time Home Away
1/9/2016 8:45am USA LEGENDS CANADA
1/9/2016 4:00pm USA NATIONAL CANADA
1/9/2016 5:30pm USA NATIONAL CANADA

By Alyssa Hollenback
Let’s Play Hockey
 

The Twin Cities-based USA Men’s National Bandy team will be venturing far from home to represent the United States at the 2016 World Bandy Championship. The tournament, which will be held Jan. 31-Feb. 7, will take place in the Russian city of Ulyanovsk. About a two-hour flight from Moscow, this central Russian city of 600,000 people is located on the Volga River. Unlike some past tournaments, the 2016 World Championship will be played in the warm indoor confines of the beautiful Volga Sport Arena, built specifically for bandy. Although it requires significant travel, the journey of 5,200 miles to Ulyanovsk seems like a hop, skip and a jump from Minnesota compared to the 8,700 miles and 16 time zones traveled to Khabarovsk, Russia for the 2015 World Championship.

 

Bandy, which is also referred to as “Russian Hockey,” is played on a large sheet of ice (lovingly known as “the big ice”) with 11 skaters for each team. The sport has had a foothold in the Twin Cities for over 30 years, with an established league and a training base at the Guidant John Rose Minnesota Oval in Roseville. Bandy continues to attract some of the top skaters in the state, including several former pro hockey players.

 

For months, Team USA has been training hard – both on the ice and off. The team participates in professional-level dryland training at the First Athlete training center in Edina. To prepare for their upcoming World Championship trip, the U.S. will also be playing Team Canada in the annual Can-Am Bandy Cup series. Hosted at the Oval on Saturday, Jan. 9 at 4 p.m., this game will serve as the team’s final preparation for the World Championships in a few weeks. For those interested in seeing what bandy is all about, this is a great chance to check out the sport in action as two national teams go head-to-head on home turf.

 

In next month’s World Championship tournament, Team USA will be participating in the “A Pool” with the top bandy teams in the world. The 10-team “B Pool” tournament will be held in the same location following the “A Pool” competition. The A Group is split into two sub-groups, one group is led by countries whose rosters are built up of full-time bandy professionals: Russia, Sweden, Finland and Kazakhstan. The second sub-group includes USA, Latvia, Belarus and Norway. As usual, Russia and Sweden are the clear favorites. Superstars Sergei Lomanov Jr. and Evgeny Ivanushkin lead Russia, while and Sweden is led by defender Andreas Westh, and scoring machines Daniel Mossberg and Christoffer Edlund.

 

Team USA is dominated by Minnesota natives, all of which are former hockey players; some have been playing bandy from a young age and others are new to the sport. The 2016 tournament finds the U.S. in the midst of a rebuilding process as they seek replacements for longtime Team USA all-stars Jon Keseley, John Arundel and Mike Hosfield. Thankfully, there is a batch of up-and-coming players that are sure to give the U.S. an edge. New players include former Gopher Mike Carman (who actually made his Team USA debut in Khabarovsk last year), Hopkins native Archie Skalbeck, Mikael Lickteig of Little Falls and David Martinson from St. Louis Park. Skalbeck played hockey at Colorado College before playing professionally in Germany last year; he has played rink bandy for several years but is ready to make his debut on the big ice in Russia. Lickteig played  hockey at Michigan Tech and made the switch to bandy three years ago, picking up the sport so quickly that he is now playing professional bandy in Gothenburg, Sweden. Martinson was the Division III Player of the Year at Gustavus in 2010 and after playing bandy for several years will be making his international debut in Ulyanovsk.

 

In addition to these newcomers, Team USA has several experienced veterans ready for battle. They include veteran backliners Andrew Knutson, Rick Haney and Scott Arundel, plus Darin Richardson, Mikael Sandberg and Dave Plaunt. Richardson is now in his seventh year playing professional bandy in Sweden. Also on hand will be Jacob Blucher and Kevin Brown, both of which are playing in the Swedish Allsvenskan League this year. With four members of Team USA currently playing in top European leagues, the U.S. is well poised for their World Championship run in a few weeks.

 

“Our team has been working very hard for several months and I believe we are ready to demonstrate to the bandy world that we can compete with the best,” head coach, longtime player and ambassador for USA Bandy, Chris Halden, said. “The first part of this goal is to win our group pool, something I believe is very realistic. Second, we want to take things a step further and do our best to pull off an upset in the semi-finals against one of the ‘big four.’ While it would be a huge upset, this has to be our mindset and will continue to drive our team.”

 

Last year, Team USA did succeed in beating Latvia and tying Norway in round robin play, but ultimately lost to Belarus and Latvia later in the tournament. Halden notes that there will be no easy matches at the 2016 tournament, but assures that Team USA is ready to take on the challenge.

 

The 2016 World Bandy Championship can be followed online at www.bandy2016.ru/en/ and www.usabandy.com.