Junior World Hockey Finals 2012: Russians Will Ride Momentum to Gold Medal

The Junior World Hockey Finals will be held tonight at 6 EDT, and the hockey world will be watching the Russians take on the Swedes with the gold medal on the line.

Russian coach Valeri Bragin has navigated his team through a treacherous schedule to reach the finals. The quality of hockey he has gotten out of his players since the tournament began back on December 26 has been superb.

They finished group play with a single blemish on their record, to Sweden in overtime no less, and only gave up five goals in the four games.

Their stampede to the gold medal game continued by knocking out the Czechs in a thrilling overtime game, followed up by a 6-5 win over Canada in which their exhaustion shone through by giving up four goals in the third period.

Now they will get their chance to claim glory in front of a packed house at Scotiabank Saddledome and avenge their lone loss to Sweden in the tournament.

Goaltender Andrei Vasilevski has been a huge reason for their success, sporting a 2.01 goals-against-average and .953 save percentage. Those numbers are reminiscent of Vladislav Tretiak, arguably one of the greatest goalies to ever put on the pads.

If he can continue to thwart attempts away from his net and doesn’t show fatigue from their grueling matches over the length of the tourney, the Russkies have a phenomenal chance of winning.

They also have the tournament's leading scorer, captain Evgeny Kuznetsov, and projected NHL No. 1 draft pick, Nail Yakupov, on the roster which certainly helps.

Igor Larionov, the legendary Russian center, believes this team is as good as his junior teams were back in the late '70s and early '80s.

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“When you watch them the whole tournament—and I’ve watched a lot of games . . . they’ve brought back a fast, exciting game to Russian hockey. Even that game against Latvia, when they showed that kind of skill, that’s how we played on the KLM line.

"One-touch passes, skating through the neutral zone, slowing down the game a little bit. All different aspects.”

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That is high praise for one of the game's greats, and all this team needs to do is pull out one more epic performance to solidify their place in Russian hockey lore.