Features

Thompson happy with the win and team progression

Thursday, 17th April 2008

GB Head Coach Paul Thompson was a lot more satisfied with his team after their 4-1 win against Korea on Wednesday afternoon and believes that his sides World Championship campaign has now started in earnest.

"After a slow start and a scrappy first period, I thought we found our proper game today. I give credit to Korea as they came out hard and they skate so well so they were always going to cause us some problems. I think though that we handled the problems well, we contained where we had to, we had some excellent goaltending from Stephen Murphy and then when we created ourselves we were composed in front of goal and took our chances well.

"I thought that the changes we made moving David Longstaff on to the Clarke Meyers line and Jonathan Phillips on to the Cowley Watkins line worked and both units had a better night. We needed to get more offence out of the Clarke line and that means getting the puck to him as he is the shooter, I thought David Longstaff did a great job of doing that today and the line came up with a big goal. Likewise Phillips adds some more speed and grit to the Watkins line so that helped make us more balanced.

"In the first period, despite leading we didn't play as I would have liked, we gave the puck away far too much and this was strongly forced home to the guys in the break. Credit to them though, they listened and executed excellent second and third periods. Whilst I think Korea were super in a lot of what they did, once we went 2-0 up I didn't see them beating us.

"Stephen Murphy looked solid in goal, he made not only some fine saves, but he also controlled his rebounds and looked in control. He deserved his man of the match award though I must say that David Longstaff couldn't have been to far behind as he controlled most things today, it was the time for our leaders and he certainly stood up to be counted."

GB Coach Paul Thomson

Paul Thompson was happier with GB's performance after their win against Korea


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