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Bishop, Penalty Kill Step Up To Aid Win

05/05/2013, 5:30pm EDT
By Brian Pinelli - Special to USAHockey.com

In just his second career start between the pipes for the U.S. Men’s National Team, Ben Bishop denied 19 of 20 shots, while making two spectacular breakaway saves to help the U.S. past Latvia, 4-1, on Sunday. With the win, the U.S. has opened the IIHF World Championship with two consecutive victories in eight of the last nine tournaments.

“I definitely felt a little better today and I think the guys played more of a team game and got better as the game went on,” said Bishop, 26, who earned U.S. Player of the Game honors. “It’s still going to take a little while for the guys to mesh, but it’s nice to get these two wins early on.”

Bishop stopped Latvian captain Lauris Darzins with a pretty glove save on the first of the two breakaways with just under five minutes left in the first period and the game scoreless. The second was another highlight reel glove save, as Bishop stoned forward Martin Cipulis early in the third period with the U.S. leading 2-1.

“I think our goaltender made some big saves and he stopped those two breakaways,” said U.S. head coach Joe Sacco. “These were two huge saves at the right time that we needed.”

Bishop, who was traded from the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lightning from the Ottawa Senators in early April spoke about the transition to the bigger ice surface in the international game.

“It’s actually quite a big difference, a lot more than I thought it would be,” said the 6’7” netminder. “The rink is a so wide so there is a lot of downtime, not as much action, but it comes in spurts.

“I love the fact that there is no trapezoid. It makes it a lot more fun for me. You just have to get used to the angles when guys are so far wide that you can’t be out too far.”

The U.S. also displayed a stingier all-around defensive effort than in its opener versus Austria, including six penalty kills, four of which were in the second period. After David Moss was assessed a double minor for high-sticking at 14:52 of the second frame, Team USA impressively shut down the Latvian power play for 3:46.

“It was a real important penalty kill,” said Sacco referring to the double minor. “To be able to go into the third period after killing that penalty off was real big for our team. I’m proud of the way we played.”

“In that second period it felt like we were killing penalties for half of the period,” said defenseman Matt Hunwick, who scored his first goal of the tournament in the third period to increase the U.S. lead to 4-1 and help seal the victory.

“It definitely takes away some of your momentum, but at the same time when you’re able to kill them off it gets you going quite a bit,” said Hunwick. “They moved it pretty well on the power play, but Bishop was great in net. It makes it tough on us killers, but I think we did a pretty good job tonight.”

“To get off to a 2-0 start with the young group that we have, we’re in a good spot right now,” said Sacco.

Following a day off on Monday, the U.S. will face its toughest test of the tournament on Tuesday evening when they’ll play Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexander Radulov and the 2-0 Russians. After two games, Kovalchuk leads the tournament in with four goals.

“We had a chance to watch a little of their game today to see what Rad and Kovalchuk can do together,” Hunwick said, referring to Russia’s 4-1 afternoon victory over Germany. “They’re obviously special players and we’ll have to do a good job as a team against them. I think we’ll get more prepared for them over the next two days and hopefully we’ll come out and play well.”

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