>>>>NHL•⪻LIVE⪼Russia vs USA(LiveStream) Reddit, Free USA vs Russia Hockey Live>>>>2020
By: Manday Night
Tags: Hockey, USA, Russia, Writing, Social Media

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Live Now:: https://tinyurl.com/y783azuc

The 2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships will be the 45th edition of the Ice Hockey World Junior Championship. It is scheduled to begin on December 25, 2020, and end with the gold medal game on January 5, 2021. This marks the 14th time that Canada will host the IHWJC.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The IIHF World Junior Championship is here.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The IIHF World Junior Championship is here.

Once again, the best under-20 hockey players from around the globe will convene to determine which nation has the best crop of juniors. This time the setting is Canada, where the hometown team is aiming for back-to-back gold. The odds-on favorite entering the 12-day event boasts a roster jam-packed with NHL first-round draft picks — 20 of 25 — and NHL-caliber talent, including team captain and Blackhawks forward Kirby Dach.

Don’t expect this to be a cakewalk, however; Team Canada will face stiff competition from Russia, which it defeated in the gold-medal game last year; a highly skilled American squad; and a Swedish roster that sports an Oilers prospect, Philip Broberg, as captain.

WORLD JUNIORS: Breakdown of every NHL team’s prospects playing

As always, the World Juniors are expected to be packed with big goals, big saves and ever bigger wins. With national pride on the line, the battle for gold will be fierce. Here’s all you need to know about the tournament.

Where is the 2021 World Junior Championship?

The 2021 World Junior Championship will take place in Edmonton, Alta.

This year’s tournament originally was scheduled to be held in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta., but the need for a secure bubble led Hockey Canada to move the entire event to where the NHL played summer hockey. The WJC is set to hit the ice in both cities, with fans — fingers crossed — in 2022.

This year marks the third time Edmonton will host World Juniors games. In 1995, Canada topped the podium; in 2012, Sweden won and the Canadians finished third in Alberta’s capital.

When will the 2021 World Junior Championship take place?

Because teams are playing on just one rink at Rogers Place, this year’s tournament includes an extra day of competition. The tournament will begin Christmas Day with a tripleheader.

The group stage, with two groups of five teams each, will span the first seven days of competition and end on New Year’s Eve. The eight surviving teams will have New Year’s Day off before returning to action for the quarterfinals on Jan. 2. The winners of those games will advance to the semifinals two days later. The bronze-medal and gold-medal games will take place Sunday, Jan. 5.

How has COVID-19 impacted the tournament?

From the jump, the tournament has felt the pandemic. The location was changed to a bubble in Edmonton. Then came the positive cases. Canada spent 14 days in quarantine during its selection camp before sending a handful of players home. Team USA lost two key players, John Beecher and Thomas Bordeleau. Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden were impacted as well.

MORE: In-depth coverage of COVID-19’s impact

What channel is the World Junior Championship being aired on?

TV channel (U.S.): NHL Network

Live stream (U.S.): fuboTV (7-day free trial)

TV channel (Canada): TSN

Live stream (Canada): TSN Direct

In an unprecedented move, every World Juniors game will be aired live on NHL Network and TSN.

YES Network: Yanks GM Brian Cashman does an annual Santa Rappel, and the network is going to air it 26 times before sunrise on Saturday (see David Wright comment above).

The more entertaining programming on Christmas has Yankee Classics perfect games (Don Larsen on Dec. 24 at 4:30 p.m.), David wells (Dec. 24 at 7 p.m.), David Cone (Dec. 24 at 10 p.m.), plus 1996 opener in the snow (Dec. 25 at 12:30 a.m.).

MSG Network: Rangers Best of … episodes run on the Eve. Igor Shesterkin has two games at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., followed by two for Pavel Buchnevich at 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. New York Giants Chronicles air from 5:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Christmas Day, following by World Poker Tour episodes from noon-4 a.m.

MSG Plus Network: New York Islanders games air for most of the two days. The 2020 Panthers playoffs at 6 p.m. (game 1), 8 p.m. (game 2) and 10 p.m. (game 4); Capitals playoffs at midnight (game 1), 6 a.m. (game 2), 8 a.m. (game 3), 10 a.m. (game 5); Flyers playoffs at noon (game 1), 2 p.m. (game 3), 4 p.m. (game 4) and 6 p.m. (game 7); and Lightning playoffs at 8 p.m. (game 3) and 10 p.m. (game 5).

MLB Network: There are documentaries on the Eve — Mr. Padre (Tony Gwynn) at 1 p.m.; the 1980s Cardinals at 2 p.m.; Mark ‘The Bird’ Fidrych at 3 p.m.; Dennis Eckersley at 4 p.m.; 1988 Dodgers at 5 p.m..; Ken Griffey Jr. at 10:30 p.m.. More docs on Christmas — The 1980s Cardinals at 2 a.m.; Baseball Saved in Seattle at 3 a.m.; Fidrych at 4 a.m.; 1988 Dodgers at 5 a.m.; 1972–74 Oakland A’s at 6 a.m.; 1980s Cardinals at 7 a.m.; Harry Caray at 8 a.m.; Joe Garagiola at 9 a.m.; Al Michaels at 10 a.m.; Rickey Henderson at 11:30 p.m.; Boxing Day — Reggie Jackson at 12:30 a.m.; Johnny Bench at 1:30 a.m.; Jim Abbott at 5 a.m.

It’s also movie time on MLB — Dec. 24 at 8 p.m. “A League of Their Own”; Dec. 25 at 3 p.m. “Brewster’s Millions”, at 5 p.m. “Trouble with the Curve”, at 8 p.m. “Moneyball.”

Bowl season

The college bowl season has already been affected by COVID-19, switching up opponents and canceling some games. Army managed to get into the Dec. 31 Liberty Bowl, and UAB lost its Gasparilla Bowl game when South Carolina pulled out.

The broadcast team of Wes Durham and Roddy Jones — who handled plenty of Southeastern Conference games this season — will be the ESPN TV crew for the Army-West Virginia matchup in the Liberty Bowl. The game will also stream on ESPNradio.com, with Jay Alter and Brad Edwards on the call (it’s uncertain whether ESPN New York WEPN 98.7-FM will have the broadcast available).

Stay tuned, for sure.

The updated slate is what follows.

Thursday schedule:

New Mexico Bowl: Hawaii (SXM 380) vs. Houston (SXM 84), 3:30 p.m., ESPN (John Schriffen, Rene Ingoglia), WatchESPN.com, ESPN app, WEPN (98.7-FM, 1050-AM), ESPNradio.com (Kevin Winter, Craig Haubert); ESPN

Biden, the Democratic former vice president, said President Donald Trump needs to squarely place blame for the hack on Russia — something he has yet to do even though both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr have accused Moscow.

Trump has floated the idea on Twitter that China might be responsible for the hacking spree. Uncovered last week, it breached at least half a dozen US government agencies and left thousands of American companies exposed.

It is a grave risk and it continues,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. “I see no evidence that it’s under control. I see none. Heard of none. Department won’t even brief us on many things. So I know of nothing that suggests it’s under control.”

Biden faulted Trump for stripping US defenses against cyber-attacks, saying: “This assault happened on Donald Trump’s watch, when he wasn’t watching.”

Responding to the cyber-attack is among a host of issues Biden faces when he starts work in the Oval Office. After defeating Trump in a November election, he also must fight the coronavirus pandemic and work with Congress to battle the economic damage from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Biden said on Tuesday his administration will put forward another COVID-19 relief package next year, including a new round of stimulus payments, after Congress passed an $892 billion relief package this week.

The next COVID relief bill should address vaccine distribution, unemployment, a moratorium on evictions for people who cannot pay their mortgages, and PPE and other supplies to businesses, he said.

How to respond

Biden said his administration will take meaningful steps to respond to the cyber breach.

The incoming White House chief of staff said on Sunday that Biden’s response to the hacking campaign would go beyond sanctions. Ron Klain said Biden was mapping out ways to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to engage in cyber-attacks against the United States.

Options being mulled by the Biden administration to punish Moscow for its alleged role include financial penalties and retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

The Kremlin denies any role in the hacking.

“The question of the damage done remains to be determined. We have to look at, very closely, the nature of the breaches, how extensive they are, and what damage has been done,” Biden said.

As Biden closes in on his final selections for his Cabinet, he will introduce his pick for US Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, at an event in Delaware on Wednesday, his transition team said.

Cardona is a veteran teacher and school administrator, a choice that would align with a pledge Biden made during his presidential campaign to appoint a teacher as education secretary.

Biden has not yet nominated an attorney general or director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Contradicting his secretary of state and other top officials, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that China — not Russia — may be behind the cyber espionage operation against the United States and tried to minimize its impact.

In his first comments on the breach, Trump scoffed at the focus on the Kremlin and downplayed the intrusions, which the nation’s cybersecurity agency has warned posed a “grave” risk to government and private networks.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,” Trump tweeted Saturday. He also claimed the media are “petrified” of “discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

There is no evidence to suggest that is the case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Friday that Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the operation against the United States.

“This was a very significant effort and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” Pompeo said in the interview with radio talk show host Mark Levin.

Officials at the White House had been prepared to put out a statement Friday afternoon that accused Russia of being “the main actor” in the hack, but were told at the last minute to stand down, according to one US official familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

It is not clear whether Pompeo got that message before his interview, but officials are now scrambling to figure out how to square the disparate accounts. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the statement or the basis of Trump’s claims. The State Department also did not respond to questions about Pompeo’s remarks.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has refused to blame Russia for well-documented hostilities, including its interference in the 2016 election to help him get elected. He blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, has endorsed allowing Russia to return to the G-7 group of nations and has never taken the country to task for allegedly putting bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“The president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Trump “doesn’t want to recognize Russia as the problem they are and the extraordinary bad actor they are on the world stage. … The reality is Russia really is a geopolitical adversary. They go against us on every front.”

Pompeo in the interview said the government was still “unpacking” the cyberespionage operation and some of it would likely remain classified.

“But suffice it to say there was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems and it now appears systems of private companies and companies and governments across the world as well,” he said.

Though Pompeo was the first Trump administration official to publicly blame Russia for the intrusion, cybersecurity experts and other US officials have been clear over the past week that the operation appears to be the work of Russia. There has been no credible suggestion that any other country — including China — is responsible.

Democrats in Congress who have received classified briefings have also affirmed publicly that Russia, which in 2014 hacked the State Department and interfered through hacking in the 2016 presidential election, was behind it.

It’s not clear exactly what the hackers were seeking, but experts say it could include nuclear secrets, blueprints for advanced weaponry, COVID-19 vaccine-related research and information for dossiers on government and industry leaders.

Russia has said it had “nothing to do” with the hacking.

While Trump downplayed the impact of the hacks, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said it compromised federal agencies as well as “critical infrastructure.” Homeland Security, the agency’s parent department, defines such infrastructure as any “vital” assets to the US or its economy, a broad category that could include power plants and financial institutions.

One US official, speaking Thursday on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that is under investigation, described the hack as severe and extremely damaging.

“This is looking like it’s the worst hacking case in the history of America,” the official said. “They got into everything.”

Trump had been silent on the hacks before Saturday.

Deputy White House press secretary Brian Morgenstern on Friday declined to discuss the matter, but told reporters that national security adviser Robert O’Brien had sometimes been leading multiple daily meetings with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence agencies, looking for ways to mitigate the hack.

“Rest assured we have the best and brightest working hard on it each and every single day,” he said.

The Democratic leaders of four House committees given classified briefings by the administration on the hack have complained that they “were left with more questions than answers.”

“Administration officials were unwilling to share the full scope of the breach and identities of the victims,” they said.

Pompeo, in the interview with Levin, said Russia was on the list of “folks that want to undermine our way of life, our republic, our basic democratic principles. … You see the news of the day with respect to their efforts in the cyberspace. We’ve seen this for an awfully long time, using asymmetric capabilities to try and put themselves in a place where they can impose costs on the United States.”

What makes this hacking campaign so extraordinary is its scale: 18,000 organizations were infected from March to June by malicious code that piggybacked on popular network-management software from an Austin, Texas, company called SolarWinds.

It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers out of the US government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March.

Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into US agencies and was among the victims, has already tallied dozens of casualties. It’s racing to identify more.

Many federal workers — and others in the private sector — must presume that unclassified networks are teeming with spies. Agencies will be more inclined to conduct sensitive government business on Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted smartphone apps.

If the hackers are indeed from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency, as experts believe, their resistance may be tenacious.

The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow.

Florida became the first state to acknowledge falling victim to a SolarWinds hack. Officials told The Associated Press that hackers apparently infiltrated the state’s health care administration agency and others.