Kazakhs win first Asia Championship

The inaugural IIHF Ice Hockey Asia Championship came to a close on Saturday in Kazakhstan, with the host team taking on undefeated Japan. The Kazakhs used speed, a balanced attack and superb defending and goaltending to take a 5-1 win over Japan and finish atop the round-robin standings.

Kazakhstan and Japan both ended up with two wins and six points but the Kazakhs won the tournament with the tiebreaker being its head-to-head victory over the Japanese.

Yevgeni Rymarev opened the scoring at 7:16 when a cross-ice pass found its way to his stick, he took a moment to load up, then snapped a hard shot over the shoulder of Japanese goaltender Issa Otsuka. Japan outshot Kazakhstan 12-6 in the first but couldn’t beat Jelal-ad-din Amirbekov.

Rymarev would add another goal in the second and Egor Namestnikow made it 3-0 for the home side late in the middle frame. The pro-Kazakh crowd erupted as their hockey heroes took a 3-0 lead into the third period.

Taiga Irikura continued his excellent tournament with Japan’s first goal of the game early in the third to cut into the Kazakh lead. Just over two minutes later, however, Vladimir Grebenshikov restored Kakzahstan’s three-goal lead and pretty much put this game to bed. The winners would add another late in the third.

The inaugural event is meant to promote and grow the game of hockey in Asian countries. The first tournament sees Kazakhstan crowned as champions, followed by Japan in second, Korea in third and China in fourth.

The host Kazakhs started the tournament slowly by dropping a 4-1 decision to Korea but showed their speed and skill in that game.

That led to a much stronger result in Kazakhstan’s second game, a 6-1 victory over China. The game was scoreless through much of the first period but the Kazakhs got a 5-on-3 powerplay with under four minutes to play. They scored on that man advantage with one of the nicest goals of the tournament, as Smitriy Grents and Rymarev exchanged several passes behind the Chinese net before Grents passes the puck to a streaking Dmitri Breus, who snuck in from the point and one-timed the puck past China’s goaltender Zehao Sun.

Breus led the Kazakh attack in this game with a hat trick, notching two goals in a six-minute span in the third. At 10:2 of the third, Breus scored on a hard wrist shot from the point on another powerplay and then, at 16:52, Breus gave the home crowd more to cheer about when…