Ice hockey-Team Europe earn respect with unlikely World Cup run

By Frank Pingue TORONTO, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Team Europe were dismissed as a gimmick when the World Cup of Hockey began 12 days ago but earned plenty of respect with a magical run to the final that ended on Thursday with a loss to powerhouse Canada. The motley mix of players from eight small European nations, many of which have never played together, relished the underdog role and quickly forged a remarkable bond that left them two wins shy of world hockey supremacy. With the flags of their home countries stitched on their shoulders and a head coach who runs an English Premier League soccer club, Team Europe will certainly leave the eight-team best-on-best tournament with their heads high. "Really proud of this team, because everybody pretty much thought we would be the laughing joke in this tournament," Team Europe's Slovenian captain Anze Kopitar told reporters. "The way we came together and played and made it to the finals, we gave Canada a pretty good run for it." The plucky Euros looked like they were going to do the unthinkable and force a decisive third game in the best-of-three series until Canada scored a pair of late goals, including one with 44 seconds to play, to secure a 2-1 victory. Team Europe ultimately proved to be much more of a match for Canada than most expected. They held the best hockey team on the planet to their lowest-scoring game of the tournament and smallest margin of victory on Thursday. "We turned this into a hell of a final. Which nobody expected," said Team Europe coach Ralph Krueger, whose day job is chairman of Southampton FC. "It was certainly the best game played by anyone against Canada in this tournament." Team Europe were created solely for the 2016 World Cup in a bid to avoid lopsided results that would likely have occurred had the next best European team after Russia, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic been included. The group of players Slovakia, Slovenia, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and Norway, opened the tournament with a 3-0 upset of the United States, followed by 3-2 overtime win over the Czech Republic before closing out the group stage with a 4-1 loss to tournament favourite Canada. Then they pulled off their biggest shock of the tournament in the semi-finals where they recorded a 3-2 overtime win over a Swedish team that won silver at the 2014 Olympics. While nobody gave Team Europe a chance against Canada, they were far from intimidated by the two-time reigning Olympic champions. During their 3-1 loss to Canada in the opening game of the final they forced Canada to rely on goalie Carey Price more than they had in their previous four games. And for all but three minutes of the clinching game they found a way to keep Canada's potent offense off the board. "The way it turned out in the end is of course very painful," said Krueger. "But you need to open your mind to the big picture and the journey this group partook and how we played today was amazing." (Reporting by Frank Pingue. Editing by Steve Keating.)