U18 Worlds: A star in the making

Photos: IIHF / Joan Reyes

Team Israel may not have received many plaudits for its campaign at the 2024 IIHF U18 World Championship in Spain, but what definitely caught everyone’s eye was the brilliant performance of one of its – and the tournament’s – younger players, Nikita Zitserman. The 15-year-old forward from Kfar Saba topped the goalscoring chart with eight goals, sharing the first spot with China’s Xu Ziheng.

Both prolific scorers have much in common – like age, for example. Zitserman was born on September 12th, 2008, while Xu is just five days younger. And both scored one goal each in a head-to-head clash.

But speaking about Nikita, not only should his quick hands and precise shot be mentioned, but also his tactical excellence. Six of his eight goals were scored on the power play, making him by far the most successful player of the tournament in numerical advantage situations.

One may argue that power play goals are easier to score. While this is not a foregone conclusion by any means, even if so, obviously, one must have some special abilities to capitalize on these occasions: tactical maturity, the ability to “read” the game and anticipate the play, as well as an extremely high level of understanding among the whole power play unit.

This reminds us that every goal is a result of a team effort, especially on the power play. And we must proudly add that over the course of the week, Evgeni Kozhevnikov’s men excelled in this department as a team. They scored 10 times from 28 attempts, and their 35.71% conversion rate was second, just a fraction behind Spain (11 for 29, 37.93%). These were just two teams with power play efficiency above 30%.

So, despite five losses, the Blue-and-Whites still have some reasons to be proud of themselves and some ground for hope that the future will bring them more wins and success.