Alright so here’s the deal–the United States are playing against Kazakhstan at the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championships. It’s the first time Kazakhstan is back in the top division of the World Juniors since 2009 so all of these kids were still in elementary school the last time these two teams would have played. Nobody is expecting this to be much of a competition, especially not Vegas.

To be honest, 7.5 is a pretty merciful line for this game. Granted, Kazakhstan only lost 5-0 to Finland in their first game of the tournament. But you’d hope to see a double-digit win here unless the USA is worried about hurting any feelings. So obviously nobody is too worried about coming out of this game with a loss. But the one thing I’d be a little worried about is how USA ends up beating Kazakhstan tonight. They didn’t look like a team who is favorited to medal against Slovakia on Wednesday night. If they come out flat in this game and look unorganized and let this game stay close for too long, it could really fuck with their heads moving forward. So they need to come out, get up big in the first 30 minutes and then they can rest their legs a little for Sweden on the back end of this game. That’s what is most important here–getting to a point where they can take their foot off the gas early enough in the game to make sure they’re as fresh as possible for the Swedes tomorrow.

And for Kazakhstan? Well at least we’ll see a bunch of forced Borat jokes on Twitter throughout the rest of the night. So with all that in mind…

LIVE BLOG OFFICIALLY ACTIVATED.

Follow along on Twitter @BarstoolJordie for up to minute highlights/updates. And then I’ll be updating the blog at the end of each period throughout the game. 

1st Period Updates: USA 4, Kazakhstan 1

So I have some good news and then I have some bad news. The good news is that Team USA finally got off to a quick start and Oliver Wahlstrom opened up the scoring just 97 seconds into the game with this top corn tuck right off the faceoff.

The bad news? Well less than a minute later, Andrei Buyalskiy scored the first goal for Kazakhstan at the World Juniors in damn near 10 years.

Advertisement

I mean… what the fuck is that? Good for Kazakhstan and everything but I’m not feeling too hot on this USA squad early on in the tournament. But there’s some more good news because just a couple minutes later, Joel Farabee gave Team USA the lead again with this snipe from the Auston Matthews circle.

Quite the barn burner we have on our hands already…

And now, we move on to the Joel Farabee show. Because after scoring 5 minutes into the game to give USA a 2-1 lead, he decided to score just a few minutes later off some pretty sexual puck movement from the squad.

And then just 12 minutes and 9 seconds into the 1st period, Joel Farabee completes the natural hat trick and becomes the 2nd Flyers prospect to score a hat trick at the 2019 World Juniors, joining Morgan Frost. Not a big deal or anything.

As long as the Flyers can play Denmark and Kazakhstan, they should be back-to-back-to-back-to-back Stanley Cup champions very soon.

2nd Period Updates: USA 7, Kazakhstan 1

Your grandma just creamed herself after watching Team USA thread the needle like this. Sasha Chmelevski makes it a 5-1 game.

Really hoping Team USA pots home a few more goals this period because I’d love to call the live blog early.

Ryan Poehling with a nice little power move to put the Americans up by 5.

And then Tyler Madden put USA up 7-1 with this filthy filthy roof job on the wrap around that was so damn filthy the ref didn’t even realize it went in at first.

Tough look for the stripes there but luckily they got the right call about 30 seconds later. Only 2 more goals to go until USA is covering.

End of 2nd Period: USA 7, Kazakhstan 1

And you know what? 7-1 at the end of period #2 is comfortable enough for me to wrap this live blog up a little early. Unless there’s some catastrophic 3rd period meltdown like the first game of Mighty Ducks D3, USA will head into the Sweden game tomorrow still undefeated in group play. Time to go to bed. Freedom has a bigger test tomorrow.

@BarstoolJordie