Rookie tournaments are always a funny thing: players are out of sync since most haven't played together before, there is a wide gap in talent on display, and this time around at least, there were some new rules being put in place. If this game was a bit of a wild affair, it should come as a surprise. The goal at these events is always more to get a handle on skill levels, size, and speed of players rather than to define how they play more generally.
The first period began with William Nylander centring Nikita Soshnikov and Martins Dzierkals, and Rinat Valiev and Matt Finn starting on D.