Athens 1, Bern 0
The best team in the league got more bite than they bargained for Sunday when one of the league’s cellar dwellers came to Bern for a visit. The Bears found out Corey Crawford was unbeatable on this day after trying 24 times to get a puck past him. It was Crawford’s first shutout in 12 EURO Legaue games. The only goal of the game came with inside 5 minutes to play, when Ryan O’Reilly backhanded in a rebound of an Ian White slapshot that Mike Smith couldn’t control. White had 5 blocked shots for Athens and his partner Lubomir Visnovsky had 3. The league’s leading scorer, Jason Spezza, had only one shot on goal but played very well in the defensive zone, blocking 4 Greek shots.
Munich 4, Belfast 0
The shots were 53-27 in a one-sided game in Northern Ireland. Joe Thornton scored twice for the Duns while teammates Joe Corvo and Chris Higgins each added a goal and an assist. Jonathan Quick earned his second shutout of the season by stopping 27 Giants shots, while at the other end, Devan Dubnyk stopped 49 pucks in a losing cause. Thornton led everybody with 11 shots on goal and 3 other Munich players had 6 shots on Dubnyk.
Prague 3, Berlin 0
Ryan Miller was one of three EURO goalies to pick up a shutout on Sunday. Miller stopped 26 Smurf shots for his 3rd blanking of the season. P-A Parenteau helped Miller by scoring his sixth of the season in the first period, and Chris Neil and Ryan Getzlaf added insurance goals in the final period. Nick Kronwall and Eric Brewer were both plus 2 for Prague. Both teams were 0-for-4 on the powerplay.
St. Petersburg 4, Moscow 2
On the Russian front, Moscow had 5 more shots, but St. Petersburg, playing on home ice, had 2 more goals. The first period ended with the Dynamo on top 1-0, thanks to an Anze Kopitar goal, his 13th of the year. St. Petersburg regrouped in the dressing room and came out flying in the second period, getting goals from Brad Richards, Jerred Smithson and Erik Cole. Alexander Ovechkin made it a one-goal game before the end of the second with his 10th, but the Lynx wouldn’t let them tie it. Blake Wheeler ended up with a goal and 2 assists for the Lynx, while teammates Andrew Ference and Richards each had 2-point games. St. Petersburg is tied for first in the conference with Copenhagen, which beat Frankfurt on Saturday, while Moscow is in 8th place, one point better than Helsinki, which lost to Minsk on Saturday.
Madrid 6, Geneva 4
Young Erik Karlsson scored two goals, including the nail-in-the-coffin goal with 1:02 remaining in the game. Almost 19,000 Spanish spectators turned out to see two of the hottest teams in hockey go at it. Madrid has now won 8 of its last 10 games, Geneva 7 of its last 10. Madrid’s fans have taken to chanting “Ole!” every time a Royal goalie makes a save, and as annoying as that was to the Generals shooters, it was music to Tomas Vokoun’s ears 22 times on Sunday. Geneva led 2-1 after a period, but a series of 5 straight minor penalties to Generals players took the wind out of their sails. Madrid got offense from several sources, as Karlsson had 3 points and five other Royals had 2 points on Sunday. Four different players scored for Geneva but only Michael Del Zotto (2 assists) had a multi-point night.
Edinburgh 3, London 2 (shootout)
Edinburgh survived a penalty in overtime and won it in a shootout. Had London been able to pull out the shootout win, the extra point would have put them in a three-way tie atop the Northern Conference standings with St. Petersburg and Copenhagen. London outshot Edinburgh by a good margin and twice took leads in the game. David Clarkson’s 13th of the year was the only goal in the first period, but Edinburgh’s Andrei Kostitsyn tied it up with the second period’s only goal. Then in the third, London went ahead on a 5-hole goal by Devin Setoguchi, but 6 minutes later, Lauri Korpikoski’s 14th of the season tied it. The winning goal in the shootout came in the third round when Jamie Benn beat Marc-Andre Fleury. The game featured a fight, as Luca Sbisa of London dropped them with Edinburgh’s Luke Schenn. Schenn was declared the winner of the Luke and Luca battle. It was his first go-round of the season and Sbisa’s second.
