, a midfielder on the championship-winning

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Jul 4 '16 | By miao1234 | 112 Profile Views | support user content | Comments: 0
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Adidas Zx 700 Uomo . - Grand Rapids captain Jeff Hoggan scored twice as the Griffins edged the Abbotsford Heat 5-3 on Friday to advance to the second round of the American Hockey League playoffs. Teemu Pulkkinen had a goal and an assist, and Riley Sheahan and Landon Ferraro also scored for the Griffins, who took the best-of-five series in four games. Markus Granlund had a goal and an assist for the Heat, who will be moving out of Abbotsford in the off-season. Shane OBrien and Kane Lafranchise also scored. The Heat took an early lead on a power-play goal from OBrien, flew past Griffins goalie Petr Mrazek at 14:21 of the first period. The Griffins came back at 7:26 of the second period when Pulkkinen fired a power-play slapshot from the left of the net to beat Abbotsford goalie Joni Ortio. McIntyre lost control of the puck in front of an open net two minutes later, and passed it to his right as Ortio righted himself. The puck found Hoggan who tipped the it into the open net to give Grand Rapids a 2-1 lead. Abbotsford forward Max Reinhart passed the puck across the ice and found Lafranchise, who weaved his way around Mrazek and backhanded the puck in to tie the game at 13:16 of the second. Hoggan struck again with 33 seconds left in the second as Griffins forward Cory Emmerton sent in a pass from the corner boards. The puck bounced around until it hit Hoggan and found its way into the net. Sheahan added a fourth goal for the Griffins 4:51 into the third, collecting a rebound and netting the puck past a recovering Ortio. A minute later, a penalty on Griffin Ryan Sproul gave Abbotsford its fourth power play of the night and Granlund found the top corner of the net just seconds into the man-advantage to bring the Heat to within one. Ferraro added an empty-net goal with 13.4 seconds left in the game. Grand Rapids outshot Abbotsford 36-27. Ortio made 31 saves for the Abbotsford, while Mrazek stopped 24 shots for Grand Rapids. Nike Air Max 90 Prezzo Basso ., continues his run in Melbourne tonight when he takes on Bulgarias Grigor Dimitrov in the third round of the Australian Open. New Balance 574 Uomo Offerta .B. -- Christophe Boivin forced extra time then scored again in a shootout to lift the Acadie-Bathurst Titan to a 4-3 win over the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies in the lone Quebec Major Junior Hockey League game Thursday.DOHA, Qatar - Its a cold, hard fact of football: Countries with tiny populations dont generally beat big ones with deep wells of talented players.So how embarrassing might the score be when Qatar — smallest host in World Cup history, with just 282,750 citizens — plays the opening game of its 2022 tournament against, for example, titans Brazil or Germany?At best 5-0? At worst 10-0, even 30-0?Impossible, impossible, said Ivan Bravo, the former Real Madrid administrator working to prevent such a loss from party-pooping over the Middle Easts first World Cup.They will be ready to have a very good team, a competitive team.Given Qatars small size and lack of football pedigree, Bravos bravura would sound like folly if not for one game-changer: money. The oil-and-gas rich nation that pokes into the Persian Gulf has mounds of it.Funneled into the state-of-the-art Aspire training academy that Bravo oversees in Doha, Qatars showcase capital, the wealth is helping to make the embryonic nucleus of what will be the 2022 home team more formidable than population numbers would suggest.Its thrilling, Bravo said in an Associated Press interview. Theres always an underdog story, the little guy trying to punch above their weight story, and I think people will get behind it.Qatar qualifies automatically as host. It could be the only Middle East representative if its neighbours stumble in qualifying, as in 2010, when no team from the region went to South Africa. A strong host performance can make a World Cup memorable: French victory at home in 1998 and South Koreas wild ride to the semis of the 2002 tournament it co-hosted with Japan.So pressure is on.The players know what an opportunity this is, Hassan al-Thawadi, Qatars chief World Cup organizer, told the AP. Im sure they wont disappoint.Aspire is a source of such confidence. It trains local kids and others unearthed by a mammoth international scouting program — dubbed Football Dreams — that screens hundreds of thousands of teenagers from 16 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The reach and size of that talent-search and Qatars history of recruiting overseas athletes to represent it internationally led to suspicions it could naturalize foreign footballers in bulk for the World Cup, although Bravo insisted that isnt the plan.He said Qatars ambition for 2022 is not only to field a team of Qataris but to also have seven, eight, nine, 10 Aspire-trained recruits from Football Dreams playing for other nations.Aspires facilities rival those of Europes best clubs. Under a giant dome, it has a full-sized indoor pitch with an exhortation from Pele on one wall: Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.Outside, generously watered grass pitches resist the desert heat. Recordings of birdsong piped in over loudspeakers give the place an Alice in Wonderland feel.Raul has an office here, wattching the academys youngsters play and handing out trophies at competitions it organizes with Chelsea, Barcelona and other teams flown over to give Qatars young players the experience and game-time they will need on the world stage in eight years. Adidas Zx Flux Saldi. Bora Milutinovic, who coached the United States, Mexico, Nigeria, Costa Rica and China at World Cups, is often seen around the place, too, working as an adviser.Young Qatari players have been embedded with professional teams in Spain, Monaco, Austria and a club Qatar bought in Belgium to immerse them in a professional football environment 24 hours a day, which is something Doha lacks, because of the league, empty stadiums, Bravo said. The 2016 Rio Olympics and 2018 World Cup in Russia, if Qatar qualifies, will also be opportunities to hone players for 2022.While the pool of native Qataris is tiny — roughly only 4,000 boys are born here each year — Bravo says Aspire scouts see nearly all youngsters so no potential talent slips through. Motivating them, however, can be challenging: Thanks to the nations oil-and-gas wealth, Qataris are the worlds second-richest people per capita and — unlike slum kids in Brazil or Africa — dont need football as an escape.Youre in a country where even attendance to training can be difficult, Bravo said, before adding: Theres a bit of a misperception about everybody in Qatar: Theyre wealthy kids, they are wearing Rolexes and driving SUVs. Its not the case. A lot of our kids come from more humble or medium-income situations.A breakthrough came in October when Qatars under-19 team beat China, Myanmar and finally North Korea to become Asian champions, qualifying them for the under-20s World Cup next year in New Zealand.All the players are Aspire products and, Bravo said, none were naturalized, puncturing what he insisted are mistaken outside perceptions that Qatar is naturalizing guys, left and right and ... shopping around the world for players.There you have the proof of what we are trying to do, he said, which is to do this with the local players, because that is what this country wants.Its amazing, acknowledged Qatars sports minister, Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali, in an AP interview. We are the least populated nation in Asia but we won. We are the champion of the most populated continent. Think about it.Qatars senior team also won the regional Gulf Cup in November, beating host Saudi Arabia — with a population more than 100 times greater — in the final. Such successes are ammunition against critics who argue that World Cup organizer FIFA should not have picked such a football minnow as host.Because its a small country they say, Why is the World Cup here? said Tareq Sulaiman, a midfielder on the championship-winning under-19 team. This is the chance for us to show them that Qatar will do something good.___Rob Harris can be followed at www.twitter.com/RobHarris and John Leicester at www.twitter.com/JohnLeicester Cheap Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Cheap Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap Jerseys China Wholesale Jerseys ' ' '

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