Ottawa Senators minor league goalie Mads Sogaard may be about to get the toughest assignment of his young goaltending career.
Team Denmark (0-1) has announced that starter Freddy Andersen, even though he's healthy and by far the Danes' best goalie, will not play against Team USA (1-0) on Saturday (3:10 p.m. TSN).
"We have a bad schedule," Denmark head coach Mikael Gath told NHL.com. "We're playing 9 o'clock against U.S., and then we play early against Latvia the day after, and we have three good goalies."
So, faced with playing two games scheduled 22 hours apart, they're clearly giving Andersen the more winnable game, because no matter who starts, the Danes are not likely to beat the Americans.
While the Danes haven't officially announced their goalie yet, Sogaard seems to be the next man up for two reasons. He's the only other Danish goalie in history to ever play in the NHL, and he was the man on the bench as the backup for the team's 3-1 loss to Germany on Thursday.
Sogaard, 25, is 1-0 with a 4.65 GAA and .833 save percentage in two games for the Senators this season. In Belleville, he's 4-8-4 with a 3.30 GAA and .889 save percentage.
Certainly not elite numbers, but probably still the club's next-best option.
So the 6-foot-7 NHL prospect could be thrown into the fire against Sens' teammates Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson, and a high-powered American team that wants to clinch a bye to the quarterfinal and keep pace with Canada for the top seed in the tournament.
But at this point, catching Canada is as tall an order as Sogaard.
Canada is 2 and 0 with a 10:1 goal differential and should be able to improve on both counts against France (0-2) in their final preliminary game on Sunday. The Americans will get a tougher opponent in Germany on Sunday.
The Danes' third option on the roster is Frederik Dichow, Montreal's fifth-round pick from the 2019 NHL Draft. He's never played in North America, but don't sleep on him as a dark horse starting option for Saturday.
Last spring, Dichow made 39 saves in Denmark's historic elimination of Canada in the World Hockey Championship quarterfinals.
Given that Denmark needs another miracle on Saturday, maybe they'll decide to roll with a goalie who recently helped deliver one.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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