Roman Josi Puts On Epic Performance, Other Predators Show Up to Start Second Week of IIHF World Championship
Among the six Nashville Predators players participating in the IIHF World Championship games in Switzerland over the next couple of weeks, the headlining name on the list of the franchise’s participants is Roman Josi.
Josi has been off to a solid start for Team Switzerland, but he had not yet had a breakout performance. That all changed Saturday, though.
Team Switzerland took on Team Hungary in its sixth game of the event thus far. The undefeated start that Switzerland had going into the game continued to roll on as the Swiss defeated the Hungarians 9-0 to move to 6-0-0 in the standings.
Six of the nine Switzerland goals were scored in the second period in the dominating win. The conductor behind Switzerland’s performance was Josi.
Josi spent 18 minutes and 36 seconds on the ice and had his best performance of the event. Josi put up a hat trick with his three goals while also assisting on a fourth Switzerland goal. His four-point performance against Hungary was the most he had recorded in the IIHF game this year.
Perhaps an even more impressive stat Josi had is that his +/- number was +5, the best of anyone on Team Switzerland Saturday. Josi also scored all three of his goals on just five shots on goal, meaning he had a 60 percent success rate scoring on his shots.
Josi scored his team’s first three goals before assisting on Switzerland’s ninth and final goal in the third period.
With the win, Switzerland jumped up to 18 points and continued to keep pace with Team Finland for first in the Group A standings.
There were two more Nashville Predators players in action between Friday’s and Saturday’s games, though.
On Friday, Predators center Ryan O’Reilly and Team Canada took on Team Slovenia and picked up a 3-1 win.
In the game, O’Reilly saw 16 minutes and 54 seconds of ice time. While O’Reilly did not score or assist on any of the three Canadian goals, he did get two shots on goal and won five of his seven faceoffs he took part in.
Predators goalie prospect Jack Ivankovic did not play in the game again.
With the win, Team Canada moved ahead of the Czech Republic for first place in the Group B standings. Canada has 14 points and a record of 4-1-0 to the Czech Republic’s 13 points.
Predators and Team USA defenseman Ryan Ufko was the final Nashville Predators player to play in Friday and Saturday’s games. Team USA took on Team Latvia Saturday, but lost 4-2. Ufko played 13 minutes and 35 seconds in the loss. He did not make much of an impact in the game as he finished the game with a +/- of -1 and recorded just one shot on goal that did not find the net.
It was the third time in five games that Team USA took a loss in this year’s IIHF games. The Americans are in fifth place in the standings with five points.
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Graham Baakko is a lead writer for both Nashville Predators On SI and Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham graduated from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as an intern for GamecockCentral.