QUEBEC CITY (AP) — No matter the outcome in the games ahead, coach Evgheniy Pysarenko knows his hockey team of young Ukrainian refugees has already won. “That’s what I told them,” Pysarenko said after the Ukrainian Selects' 2-0 win over Team Romania at the International Peewee Tournament in Quebec City earlier this week. What impresses Pysarenko about this collection of 11- and 12-year-olds cobbled together from Ukraine and bordering countries where their families fled the Russian invasion is not so much the two victories they’ve already posted.
Ukrainian boys already winners at Peewee hockey tournament