Steel looking to bring home World Club title

The Chicago Steel are a little over a month away from kicking off the USHL regular season and while the mission is always to get to and bring home the Clark Cup, the team is opening the season with a little detour — to Russia.

The Steel will represent the USHL next week at the Fifth Annual Junior Club World Cup to be played in a trio of cities in the Sverdlosk Region of Russia — Yekaterinberg, Verkhnyaya Pyshma and Nizhny Tagil.

Eight teams will take part in the event, competing in two divisions of four teams each. Both Divisions will hand a Russian Representative and along with the USHL representing the USA will be teams from Finland, Sweden, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Latvia.

The Steel was scheduled to leave today (Tuesday, Aug. 18) and will begin play on Monday with its first game against Snezhnye Barsy from Kazakhstan. On Tuesday, the Steel will go up agianst HC Riga of Latvia and then wrap up round robin play with Avto, from Russia. The other four-team division will see teams from Belarus (Dynamo-Bobruisk), Finland (TPS Turku) and Sweden (Djurgarden) along with Chaika from the host Russian league.

Top two finishers on each side at the end of round robin play will continue into Friday with semi-finals which all eight returning Saturday for placement matches. While the semi-final winners will play for top spot, the other two teams will play for third place. Leading up to those games on Saturday, the two third place finishers from each division will play for fifth place and the two fourth place teams will meet in a seventh place match.

Russia has fared the best at earlier versions of this event — taking three of four titles. The only non-Russian winner so far was the Sudbury Wolves of the OHL in Canada who claimed the title in 2012-13.