Canada wins first WJHC gold since 1997
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (CP) - The Canadian junior men's hockey team put on a dominating display to win the gold medal at the world junior championship Tuesday with a 6-1 win over Russia.
After finishing a heartbreaking second the last three years in this tournament, Canada left nothing in doubt by scoring four times in the second period for a five-goal lead heading into the final 20 minutes.
The sellout crowd of 11,862 at the Ralph Engelstad Arena - the majority of them Canadian - began singing goodbye to the Russian team midway through the third period.
They erupted at the final buzzer as the Canadian players mobbed goaltender Jeff Glass, hugging each other after throwing their sticks and gloves in the air while Queen's classic song We Are The Champions blared.
IIHF president Rene Fasel and Wayne Gretzky then presented captain Michael Richards with the championship trophy. Richards promptly skated it over to his teammates, who took turns thrusting it in the air.
Gretzky handed out the gold medals before players linked arms and sang O Canada in a tradition that began in 1982, when the Canadian team won in Minnesota, but had to sing the national anthem when it went missing.
''I'm so happy for the kids,'' coach Brent Sutter told TSN. ''They played a hell of a tournament right from the get go.''
Russia had no answer for a Canadian defence that gave up only 19 shots on Glass.
It was the first world junior title for Canada since 1997, when the country capped a run of five straight gold medals.
Canada scored three power-play goals and its penalty killers held the vaunted Russian power-play to one lone goal in the first period.
The Canadian team played with controlled emotion and relentless determination.
Ryan Getzlaf, Danny Syvret, Jeff Carter, Patrice Bergeron, Anthony Stewart and Dion Phaneuf scored for Canada, which lost the 2002 and 2003 championship games to Russia.
''It's an unbelievable feeling,'' Carter told TSN. ''This is what we were going for and we got it now.''
Getzlaf, who was a standout in the game for Canada, and Andrew Ladd each had two assists.
''It's amazing,'' Getzlaf told TSN. ''We were the team on the other side last year. This is our time now.''
Bergeron was named tournament MVP while Phaneuf was chosen the top defenceman. Both were named to the all-star team, too, along with Carter.
Russian defenceman Alexei Emelin scored a power-play goal for Russia in the first period.
Star Alexander Ovechkin was used sparingly in the second period and at the start of the third period, he was out of his skates and in his track pants on the Russian bench because of a right shoulder injury.
Canada put the game away in the second period with four unanswered goals - two of them on the power play - and chased Russian goaltender Anton Khudobin at 3:33 after the Minnesota Wild draft pick gave up three goals on 15 shots. He was replaced by Andrei Kuznetsov.
Phaneuf's shot from the blue-line beat Kuznetsov's outstretched glove at 13:19 to make it 6-1 for Canada. Stewart tipped in a Nigel Dawes pass at 8:54.
Kuznetsov gave up a long rebound on a Sidney Crosby blast and Corey Perry chipped it over to Bergeron who had an open net at 7:53.
Carter whipped a sharp-angled shot from the boards by Khudobin to spark Canada's outburst and send the Russian goaltender to the bench.
Canadian goaltender Jeff Glass didn't face a lot of shots again behind a formidable defence, but he did make a glove same from close range on Enver Lisin after Carter's goal.
Canada had a five-minute man advantage late in the second period after Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Dimitri Vorobiev put his stick in Dawes' face and was given a major and a game misconduct.
Emelin pulled Russia within a goal before the first period expired. His shot through traffic with 32 seconds remaining gave Russia a power-play goal.
Canada had taken a 2-0 lead on Syvret's power-play goal at eight minutes. Braydon Coburn's shot on net hit the end boards and Syvret collected it and banked it off Anton Khudobin.
Getzlaf scored 51 seconds into the game when he took a Carter drop pass and blasted it by Khudobin.
Canada killed off a 1:12 worth of a two-man Russian advantage early in the first period after Perry took an interference minor and Shea Weber hauled down Evgeni Malkin for a tripping penalty.
This Canadian junior team was the country's best in a long time and arguably the best ever. The NHL lockout combined with spike in talent in Canadian players born in 1985 made the 2005 team a formidable one. Players who might not have otherwise been available to the Canadian team from their NHL clubs were still playing in the junior ranks.
The closest team in depth and talent to this one may have been the team in 1995 - the last time there was an NHL labour disruption - and Canada dominated that tournament in Red Deer, Alta.
Canada outscored the opposition 32-5 during the round-robin portion of this tournament to finish first in Pool B. A 3-1 semifinal win over the Czech Republic, in which Glass faced only 11 shots and fewer quality scoring chances, sent Canada to the final of this tournament for the fourth straight year.
While the team's road to the final looked easy on paper, it wasn't without adversity as defence Cam Barker was sent home after three games with mononucleosis, forward Jeremy Colliton was able to play just over one period with a knee injury and defenceman Brent Seabrook played through a shoulder injury he suffered on the first day of selection camp.
Sutter, a Stanley Cup winner during his 18-year NHL career and a former international player for Canada, guided the team with a firm, but intelligent hand.
This was Canada's oldest team at the world juniors and with a record number of returning players from last year's tournament in Helsinki, they knew the drill and what was at stake.
A dozen players on this squad played for Canada last year and suffered the disappointment of wasting a two-goal lead in the third period. The U.S. scored three times in the period to win 4-3.
Attendance at the 2005 tournament was 195,771, which fell short of the record set by Halifax in 2003 at 242,173. The hundreds of Canadians who made the trek to Grand Forks, two hours south of the Manitoba border, swelled the number of spectators in the stands.
Tuesday's gold-medal game was as close to a home game for the Canadian team as it could be without actually being in the country.
The 2006 world junior hockey championship will be held in Vancouver, Kamloops and Kelowna, B.C.
'24' offers usual surprises
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Surprise is what makes 24 tick, and there should be plenty of it as Jack Bauer embarks on a fourth season of saving the world from terrorists.
Or maybe this time he won't. With Agent Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, you can never be sure.
"There's a sort of roiling internal conflict put into the body of a hero," says executive producer Evan Katz, describing Bauer's "dark corners" as being more traditional for a villain. "You're not sure what he will do, not sure how far he will go."
Last season, Bauer shot up heroin, cut off the arm of his Counter Terrorist Unit partner, shot a man in custody to get him to hand over information more quickly and threatened to expose a terrorist's daughter to a deadly virus, just to name a few. But he also saved the world from that killer virus.
This season, set 18 months later, Bauer has kicked his drug habit. Booted out of CTU, he has a new job working for Secretary of Defence James Heller, played by William Devane.
Most of the series' previous villains, including President David Palmer's scheming wife, Sherry, are no more. Gone too, at least for now, are cast members Dennis Haysbert, who portrayed Palmer for three seasons, and Elisha Cuthbert, who played Bauer's constantly imperilled daughter, Kim.
Palmer decided not to run for re-election after the death of his evil wife. Katz would not discuss where Kim went, although both characters are still alive and therefore could return at any time.
Fox is premiering the new season of 24 as a "2"-day, "4"-hour event. In Canada, the show airs Sunday, Jan. 9 on Global, and Monday, Jan. 10 on CH stations. Then, beginning Jan. 17, the remaining hour-long episodes - each consisting of an hour in the life of Bauer - will air Monday nights without repeats or pre-emptions.
New this season, along with veteran character actor Devane, are Kim Raver as Heller's daughter and Bauer's new love interest, Audrey, and Alberta Watson as CTU chief Erin Driscoll, who of course totally disapproves of Bauer.
There are also spanking new CTU headquarters and a whole slew of new villains, including Nestor Serrano and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Oscar-nominated for 2003's The House of Sand and Fog) as a Middle Eastern husband and wife plotting something dastardly.
"There's no question there are more wholesale changes than usual," Katz said.
He noted the story lines involving President Palmer and Kim Bauer had "run their course" and that "catching the audience by surprise" remains a critical element of the series.
Not wanting to give away those surprises, Katz can't offer much elaboration. He does say the new season - "Day 4" as it's called, because each season covers 24 hours - will be "big emotionally," but that it's important to avoid making the action too fanciful - like over-the-top James Bond-style thrillers.
It's vital for the tension of the series that "it stay true to the real-time format," Katz explains. Yet that can be a challenge to the show's authenticity, particularly because the action takes place in Los Angeles, where traffic can be snarled around the clock.
"We stretch things as much as we can. We have helicopters and, don't forget, we count the time in commercial breaks," laughs Katz, whose previous credits include the quirky monster-chasing series Special Unit 2, which aired on UPN several years ago.
The new CTU headquarters set - an elaborate, multistorey maze of steel, glass and concrete with splashes of peacock blue and ruby red brightening its sleek design - looks like something any Bond movie would be proud to feature.
On this day, Raver's Audrey was challenging the methods and motivations of the CTU staff, while Devane waited off-camera for a later scene.
Wry and tough, Devane has the perfect manner for someone who's not supposed to give too much away.
"I'm the kind of secretary of defence the country needs," is about all he'd say about his character.
Devane's take on the plot?
"Jack works for me. I have a daughter who's my aide, and son who's kind of a hippie guy. We came to L.A. for something - I forget what - and all hell breaks loose and Jack takes charge."
He grins. "That's the one thing I've learned: Jack takes charge and he gets it done!"
Jennifer Garner Ill With Viral Infection
NEW YORK - Actress Jennifer Garner is ill with a viral infection, forcing her to cancel TV appearances promoting her new film, "Elektra," according to reports.
Publicist Nicole King said she didn't know if Garner would attend the premiere of the film in Las Vegas Saturday, USA Today reported.
King said Garner, 32, was seeing a doctor Tuesday. The season premiere of her TV series "Alias" was set for 9 p.m. Wednesday on ABC.
Sheryl Crow Hatching Two Albums This Year
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Sheryl Crow is coming back with a vengeance. After sitting out much of 2004, she has not one, but two albums ready to go for 2005.
"I want to put out an artist record first and then a pop record in the fall," she says. "I'm going to hand both my records in (to Interscope) probably in the last bit of January."
So what makes an "artist" record different from a "pop" record? Crow laughs and says, "Probably the art record will never get any airplay. It's just a really heartfelt, stripped-down, no-bells-and-whistles record that lyrically probably has heavier content than maybe a pop record does."
She adds that she still loves writing pop songs, "but for me, just for a long time, I've been wanting to sit down and write songs that I feel compelled to write."
She figures that the success of 2003's "The Very Best of Sheryl Crow" (which has sold 3.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan) allows her "to put out a record that's maybe not as commercial."
Given her very public romantic relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong, she says it is no surprise that her mood is upbeat these days -- and it shows in her music.
"I am writing a lot more love songs because I'm really happy in my life, and I'm in a really positive relationship, but there's also so much stuff to write about in the world. It's a really interesting time to be an artist."
She adds that any performer now has to guard against the cult of celebrity. "People are having such an adverse reaction to celebrities that to be a celebrity is a negative term, and to be an artist, you have to fight that part of it. For me, in order to find a way to reach people in a medium that's based on commerciality, but to also say something, is a real interesting question and really exciting."