The World Championships resumed on Tuesday, and Anton Frondell of the Chicago Blackhawks made a loud return to the lineup.
The World Championships continued on Tuesday with a handful of matches in Switzerland. The teams playing were wrapping up their group play schedule as the elimination rounds were approaching.
For the Blackhawks, they had six players on the teams involved. Two of them, Arvid Soderblom and Anton Frondell, played for Team Sweden, which has aspirations of winning the whole thing.
Soderblom has been rotating starts for Sweden, but Tuesday's game vs Slovakia was not his. Will they use just one goalie once the post-group play games begin? That remains to be seen. Sweden believes that they can win with whoever they use, hence their lack of commitment to one goalie.
As for Frondell, he missed Sweden's last game against Norway due to an injury that he sustained in the previous game vs Italy. They decided not to dress Frondell in their first few games for unknown reasons, but they clearly feel they need their young superstar now.
In his return to the lineup, which didn't look like a guarantee after sustaining his hand injury by slamming it into the open player bench door, Frondell scored a goal.
Frondell's goal was scored via a one-time shot nearly on the goal line. His ability to find the back of the net from this tough of an angle shows his pure shooting skill, along with his confidence to take a shot from this part of the ice.
This marker for Sweden tied it up at one, and they never trailed again. The game-winning goal was credited to Ivar Stenberg, who scored a beautiful goal of his own to make it 3-1 later in the game. A Slovakia goal is what made Stenberg's hold as a game winner. After an empty net goal by Oliver Ekman-Larsson, the 4-2 score stood as the final.
Stenberg is not making it easy to see any of the teams ahead of the Blackhawks in the draft order passing on him once Gavin McKenna is off the board. His tournament has been beneficial to his draft stock, which was already high to begin with.
The goal that Stenberg scored in this game was amongst the best in the entire tournament. He created his own zone entry by skating the puck in on a one-on-one, cut back against the player defending him (who ended up on the ground), and whistled the puck past the goaltender.
Although there will be significantly less room on NHL ice, these types of skills will help him impact games once he learns the pro game in North America.
With this win, Team Sweden earned the final quarterfinal spot in Group B. Slovakia, which they beat, will miss the advancement. The Swedes will match up against Switzerland next.
United States Advances
The United States brought a very young team to the World Championships after seeing the Olympic team win Gold back in February. They looked like it early as they couldn't find ways to win. At one point, it looked like they might miss a quarterfinal bid entirely.
On Tuesday, however, they needed one win over Austria to avoid seeing their tournament end early. Drew Commesso and Wyatt Kaiser did not dress for the Americans, but Oliver Moore and Sam Lafferty did.
Team USA didn't get any points from their two Blackhawks skaters, but they won 4-1 thanks to goals scored by Connor Clifton, Ryan Ufko, Paul Cotter, and Matthew Tkachuk.
It will be a rematch of the Gold Medal Game from Milano Cortina as the United States will face Canada on Thursday.
This young USA team will see a Canadian squad loaded with stars like Sidney Crosby, Macklin Celebrini, John Tavares, and Ryan O'Reilly, amongst others. After the Olympics, this is a fitting way to end one of their international years as hockey nations.
All Quarterfinal Matchups:
Canada vs United States
Norway vs Latvia
Switzerland vs Sweden
Finland vs Czechia
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