2017 IIHF World Championship Canada vs Russia

COLOGNE, Germany – Canada will shoot for gold on Sunday at the IIHF World Championship after Saturday’s 4-2 semifinal win over Russia. Canada erased a two-goal, third-period deficit, scoring four unanswered to defeat their rivals.

• Nathan Mackinnon (Cole Harbour, N.S./Colorado, NHL) and Ryan O’Reilly (Varna, Ont./Buffalo, NHL) netted a goal and an assist each. Mark Scheifele (Kitchener, Ont./Winnipeg, NHL)and Sean Couturier (Bathurst, N.B./Philadelphia, NHL) added Canada’s other goals.
• Colton Parayko (St. Albert, Alta./St. Louis, NHL) added two more assists, while Mackinnon’s two points give him 14 (6 goals, 8 assists) through nine games in the tournament.
• Canada outshot the Russian team 38-28; Calvin Pickard (Winnipeg/Colorado, NHL) made 26 saves in his fifth tournament win.

Next game: Team Canada has a chance to go back-to-back-to-back for the first time since 1950-52 on Sunday, May 21, at 2:30 p.m. ET when it faces the semifinal winner between Sweden-Finland.  

“[With] every guy on our team, there’s no panic in our game; we knew we needed to be a lot better. We were confident that even if we didn’t win, we were going to give it a good effort and it’s amazing how things work out.” –   O’Reilly on the comeback

 

“I walked into the room and there was a little tension. Somebody blurted out ‘it’s okay boys we’ve got them right where we want them’ and it calmed the whole group down. We knew we had it in us and we knew we were on our heels a lot because we were killing penalties the whole time. I think the big thing for us, we took a breath in the locker room, went out and scored a powerplay goal, and right then you could see the weight go off our shoulders; after that we played a heck of a third.” –   Jon Cooper, Team Canada’s head coach on what was said during the second intermission with his team trailing by two