U20 Division 1B in Ukraine
 

I didn't see a thread for this so I decided to make this.

Frankly I can see why there is no thread as it's pretty damn frustrating.

Ukraine hosted but they did pretty terrible.

2-1 Shootout win over Great Britain

3-1 loss to Italy

2-0 win over Poland, who won promotion.

2-1 Shootout loss to Kazakhstan

2-1 win over Croatia

Ruslan Romashenko was the leading Ukrainian scorer with 4 points in 5 games.

Mykhailo Shevchuk had the highest save percentage.

As I wrote somewhere else, I think this is Ukraine's junior hockey current level - 17-23 in the world. The tight scores kinda support my theory. The only real performer indeed was the goalie who made some scores look better than they actually should.

The ones who really should feel frustrated are Kazakh fans, even with the underage squad they brought, they should of taken the gold with little resistance. If they won't be promoted next year, I'll eat my hat.

Hopefully the development program in place will improve the junior national squads in the near future. We're seeing decent results from Latvia and Belarus so hopefully Kazakhstan, Ukraine and even Poland will follow.

Well if we are taking strictly junior development than Latvia is way ahead of belarus in the recent years,mostly because of the coaching is better in Latvia than in Belarus.

Yepp, but Belarus is still quite a bit better than Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

Unfortunately I can't disagree with you.

What was the reason Padkin wasn't playing, did the Hitmen not want to let him go?

Probably. CHL teams normally don't release players for low divisions like this. Tim Bozon wasn't released either.