Buffalo Sabres: Rosen, Kulich showed up in the IIHF Quarterfinals

Buffalo Sabres prospects Isak Rosen and Jiri Kulich made some phenomenal plays, helping their respective teams advance to the Semifinals.

If you watched the 2022 IIHF World Juniors up to this point, you can’t help but be excited for Buffalo Sabres prospects Jiri Kulich and Isak Rosen. Yeah, they are playing against many players who will never grace the NHL ice in the tournament. But why spoil the fun? These two kids have looked spectacular all tournament long and there has been no drop-off in their play.

In fact, their level of play has risen to new heights, if nothing else. And the Quarterfinals may have been their best outings yet. If you missed the first phase of the knockout round, let me bring you up to date on the dominance of Rosen and Kulich.

The Buffalo Sabres and their fans need to be raving about Jiri Kulich and Isak Rosen’s play as the 2022 IIHF World Juniors reaches its twilight phase.

Let’s start with Kulich, who sunk the game-winner against a rough-tough United States team. Okay, you might tell me that Kulich’s goal was an empty-netter. But that’s not what made this play special; Kulich’s on-ice awareness allowed him to score the easy goal. Check it out below:

As you can see, Kulich was doing what he does best, gliding up the ice with nothing but net in front of him, combining awareness and speed. He also had two assists on the evening, and what you will see in the following video shows you just how tenacious he is. And spoiler alert, it was arguably the best assist I’ve seen from anyone dating back to January 2022.

Earlier in the day, Isak Rosen and Team Sweden faced off with Latvia, a Cinderella team that nearly pulled off another upset. But Rosen was having none of it in the two to one affair. Like Kulich’s breakaway goal to seal the deal against the US, Rosen’s awareness and speed made this play possible.

The difference? Rosen’s goal came off of a rebound. When you watch the video below, look to the top right-hand side of your screen and you will see Rosen barreling in with such a fast shot you may need to put the video in slow-mo to really see what’s going on here. If you blink, you will miss the goal.

Rosen and Team Sweden will play rival Finland in the Semifinals while Kulich and Team Czechia will have their hands full against Team Canada. That said, it is highly likely Kulich and Rosen will face off as the tournament reaches its conclusion.

Both games take place on Friday, August 19th, with Canada and Czechia going at it first at 2:00 pm MST before Sweden and Finland take the ice at 6:00 pm MST. Will Kulich and Rosen square off in the finals? We shall see.

(Statistics provided by IIHF.com)