An All-Star OT win for the South

AMSTERDAM – In a city famous for late nights, the Southern Conference took the North to overtime and then won it. The all-time series record is now 9 wins for the North and 4 for the South.

The game started like a real hockey game. Defense was played and the score was 1-1 after a period with starters Martin Jones (London) and Chris Dreidger (Paris) looking sharp between the pipes. The teams battled to a 2-2 tie the next period and each team scored 3 in the third.

The winning team was led by some defending EURO Cup winners. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins played through injury to score the first goal of the game, linemate Vadim Shipachyov scored the team’s second goal and Smurf defenseman Morgan Rielly had a goal and an assist. He was also named game MVP and was given the keys to a 2022 Ferrari SF90 Stradale.

The top Northern Conference players were David Pastrnak of Belfast (1 goal, 1 assist) and Auston Matthews of Copenhagen (2 assists)

The winning goal game at 3:16 of overtime. Rielly got to a loose puck that Pastrnak mishandled and moved it up to Mika Zibanejad of Bern who ragged the puck for about 30 seconds. By that time, Erik Karlsson of Paris had replaced Rielly on the ice. Zibanejad fed him a pass in the slot and Karlsson fired a wrist shot to beat Matt Murray of Oslo.

*Wayne Gretzky poses with Morgan Rielly after the Smurfs defenseman was named MVP of the Season 14 EURO League All-Star Game in Amsterdam.*

Game Summary
Scoring by periods
North – 1-2-3-0 … 6
South – 1-2-3-1 … 7

First period
Goalies: North – Jones; South – Driedger

South – Nugent-Hopkins (1) Asst: Faulk (1), Kronwall (1)

North – Alisauskas (1) Asst: Matthews (1), Stamkos (1)

Second period

Goalies: North – Nedeljkovic; South – Pickard

North – Pastrnak (1), Asst: Cetinkaya (1), Matthews (2)

South – Shipachyov (1) Asst: Sherbatov (1)

South – Kuusk (1) Asst: Forsberg(1), Stone (1)

North – Lehtonen (1) Asst: Pacioretty (1), McDavid (1)

Third period

Goalies: North – Murray; South – Mrazek

South – Aho (1) Asst: Barzal (1), Kovar(1)

North – Bennett (1) Asst: Pastrnak (1)

South – Rielly (1) Asst: Tkachuk (1), Nugent-Hopkins(1)

South – Giroux (1) Asst: Krug (1), Myers (1)

North – Hertl (1) Asst: Nylander (3), Del Zotto (1)

North – Huberdeau (1) Asst: Hamilton (3), Jenner (1)

OVERTIME

South – Karlsson (1) Asst: Rielly (1), Zibanejad (1)

3 Stars
1 – Morgan Rielly (Berlin) Southern Conference (1 goal, 1 assist)
2 – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (Berlin) Southern Conference (1 goal, 1 assist)
3 – Martin Jones (London) Northern Conference (1 goal against, 10 saves)

Attendance: 14,944