Nov. 18, 2004
Notre Dame, Ind. – Two former Notre Dame hockey players – Yan Stastny (St. Louis, Mo.) and Mark Eaton (Wilmington, Del.) – were members of the U.S. National hockey team that won its second consecutive Deutschland Cup title in Hannover Germany on November 14th.
Stastny, who is currently playing for the Nuremberg Ice Tigers in Germany, had a goal and an assist in the four game tournament. Eaton, a member of the Nashville Predators of the National Hockey League, scored once in the title winning game versus Slovakia.
Team USA finished the tournament with a 3-1-0 record as did Canada, but the U.S. won the tiebreaker of goal differential as they outscored their opponents by eight goals while Canada outscored its opponents by just four goals. The U.S. captured the tournament that features teams from the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Slovakia in 2003 and 2004 and was second in 2002.
The United States opened the tournament with a 5-1 win over Germany with Stastny assisting on a Tom Preissing goal in that game.
Game two for the U.S. came versus Canada with Team Canada jumping out to a 4-1 first-period lead on the way to a 5-3 victory. Stastny, who played two seasons at Notre Dame (2001-03), scored the second goal of the game for the United States, cutting Canada’s lead to 4-2.
The U.S. improved to 2-1-0 in the tournament by downing Switzerland, 4-2 and then won the championship with a 4-0 win over Slovakia in the final game. Eaton scored a second-period power-play goal in the game that gave the U.S. a 2-0 lead. The Nashville defenseman played at Notre Dame during the 1997-98 season and was the CCHA rookie of the year before signing a free-agent contract with Philadelphia. His season has been put on hold by the NHL lockout.
Stastny is in his second season with Nuremberg and in 17 games is the Ice Tigers second leading scorer with 10 goals and eight assists for 18 points. His team competes in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL).